


Now I Only Waste it Dreaming of You (Or, You and Me are the Universe's OTP)

by corruptedkid, reading_is_in



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Bandom Big Bang, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-15 15:55:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12324183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corruptedkid/pseuds/corruptedkid, https://archiveofourown.org/users/reading_is_in/pseuds/reading_is_in
Summary: Early 2011. During the hiatus, Pete makes a wish, and accidentally acquires the power of time travel.  He goes to the Way brothers for ‘help’.FANMIXandWRITEUPby corruptedkid.





	Now I Only Waste it Dreaming of You (Or, You and Me are the Universe's OTP)

**Author's Note:**

> Exact times at which people got married/had babies/got divorced/etc may be manipulated for narrative purposes. Needless to say, this is pure fiction based on the mediated representation of real people and bears little to no relation to reality. Although, I have it on good authority from a physicist that if the universe is truly infinite, anything that _can_ happen, _does_ happen somewhere in time and space. So when you really think about it, the Universe writes RPF about us all.

“The doctor said everything looks great, honey.”

Ashlee is standing by the counter, unpacking dairy-free milk substitute, eco-friendly lightbulbs and a fresh bottle of the pre-natal vitamins she’s taking twice a day. Pregnancy suits her – her blonde hair is thick and shiny, bump just beginning to round out the sundresses she’d taken to wearing.

“That’s great,” says Pete. “I’m so glad.” And he is.

He is also, possibly, terrified. Realistically, Pete is never going to refrain from Googling himself for any significant length of time, but he really should learn to stay off the message boards:

_LOLOLOLOL Pete’s having a kid_

_OMG_

_I mean I love Pete but this is gonna be such a trainwreck_

_10 bucks says he leaves it on public transport_.

The internet is too good at mimicking Pete’s subconsciousness.

He wants this child. He loves it already. But God, Pete is unprepared to be a father. This is what he wanted, isn’t it? To be married, have a family, to be something approaching stable in a nice house in the suburbs with his dog and his wife and the child they made together.

That night, Ashlee’s asleep by eleven. Pete knows he has at least a few hours to kill before the chance of sleep, he finds himself on the roof - not in that way, Jesus. It’s 2011. He just like to look at the stars sometimes, okay? It’s a warm night. The stars make him nostalgic. Or maybe he goes and looks at the stars when he’s a nostalgic mood. The past is absurdly close to the surface tonight. He brought Hemingway up, who is snuffling and leaning against his leg heavily – thankfully, Hem's never shown any interest in the edge of the roof, being a much more sensible type than Pete ever was. Plus he’ll be eight next year. At his last checkup, the vet said he looked good for a ‘senior’ bulldog, and advised giving him glucosamine when he was slower getting up in the morning. Pete cups Hemingway’s face and looks mournfully into his hooded eyes. Hem looks mournfully back at him, then extends his enormously long tongue and licks Pete right across the face. Pete laughs and wipes his face in his sweatshirt, then his sweatshirt on Hem. 'Sugar, We’re Going Down' was on the radio earlier. Pete turned it off after three bars. Memories of the recording flitter at his consciousness whilst he distracts himself, looks for planets, plays several games of Mah-Jong on his phone whilst Hem snores on his leg. He wonders if Gabe is busy or awake (it’s coming on 3 in Chicago, has he been up here two hours already?) then finally he looks up at the sky and thinks ‘I wish…’

The rest of it isn’t language. Then he sighs and gets up, stuffing his hands in his pockets as he turns back towards the skylight.

Behind his back, a lone star shoots across the night sky, before dropping and trailing a line of light over the dark horizon.

*

When Pete wakes up, he feels familiar.

What?

Of course he feels familiar, waking up isn’t exactly a new experience. But this familiarity is tinged by something – nostalgia? No, not nostalgia, not quite. He opens his eyes.

Instead of the white ceiling of the airy master bedroom in Los Angeles, he’s greeted by the bottom of Joe’s bunk and a close wall covered in posters. Wait. Wait. He sits up, half-thinking he’s gonna knock himself out on the bunk above, but somehow his body remembers just the right movements to pull the curtain back and sit up and swing out at the same time, and –

\- are those his arms?

Yes, absolutely, but they’ve lost the LA tan his skin picks up in minutes, and where’s the scar from the dog food pull-can the side of his right forefinger? Where’s the thinking-face emoji he got tattooed on his left forearm last year? (Okay he can live without that one back, but the rest is pretty disturbing). Cautiously, Pete stands and peers upwards. Then left. Then right. Without doubt, he is standing in the aisle of his and Joe’s Warped Tour bus.

Fast asleep in the bunk above him is Warped Tour Joe.

Pete yelps then clamps both hands over his mouth to stop himself. The sound he produced was not in any way a scream.

“Dude!” There’s some scrambling, then Joe’s practically fro-less head appears over the side of his bunk, very pissed off. “What the fuck Pete?”

“Joe you – I – JOE WHAT DAY IS IT?”

“Uhh, Tuesday. We still got like an hour before the schedule goes up, let me sleep.”

“TUESDAY THE WHAT? OF WHAT WHAT? WHAT YEAR IS THIS?”

“Oh God,” Joe groans and covers his face with his hands. “Pete you had a dream. Go back to sleep, everything’s fine.”

Pete freezes. He’d been on some weird prescriptions in the mid 2000s, is it possible he’s hallucinated everything that’s happened in the space between then and now? But if that were true, how could he feel so much, well, stronger? Physically, that is. It has only been six years, but Pete knew he wasn’t taking care of himself lately (wasn’t? Wouldn’t be?!). He hadn’t felt much like eating or working out, his insomnia had been bad and he was drinking a bit too much. The Black Cards had performed at a festival last week (or – would perform?!?) and Patrick had texted him afterwards, writing all the letters out with his characteristic disdain for text speak:

  
_Saw your set with Bebe. She was excellent. You don’t look so good._

No-one ever accused Patrick of flattery.

But now, all of a sudden, Pete feels energised and better rested than he has in a long time. His arms have some muscle definition back and he is definitely sober. Now if he could just figure out the apparently complete psychotic break he’s having –

\- then he sees the mirror.

“Holy shit this is so weird,” he says plaintively.

Staring back at him is his approximately twenty-five-year-old reflection. The infamous emo haircut is back in all its painstakingly straightened glory. Black eyeliner is smeared around his eyes and smudged a little way down one cheek. He apparently slept in his clothes, because he’s wearing dark red ultra-skinny jeans, black Converse, and a yellow t-shirt that says INSECURITY CREW in black capital letters.

“Alright I’ll bite if you promise to leave me alone after,” Joe grumbles. “What’s so weird?”

“I…” Pete says, but just at that moment, there’s a joyful bark from the lounge area and fifty pounds of solid bulldog comes barrelling towards him like a freight train. “HEMMY!”

Pete yells and throws his arms around his dog: “You’re young again!” Hemingway licks his face furiously, then paused and sat back on his haunches. His wagging tail slows, but doesn’t stop. There’s no grey in his fur at all, and he’s as wiggly as a puppy. He sniffs Pete’s hands, then his clothes and gives a hesitant whine:

“It’s okay boy, it’s me!” Pete exclaimed, rubbing Hemmy’s ears and scratching him all over. He tickles under Hem’s chin in the exact way he likes it, and the wary look drops from the dog’s eyes. He woofs joyfully, bowing his head into the petting, giving maximum access and shoving at Pete like a cat. His body language is still a little confused, but he licks Pete’s hands: “I know, weird huh?” Pete mutters. We’ll figure it out. It will be okay, we’ll be okay.”

“Okay whatever you’re doing, seriously do it outside Pete,” Joe holds a pillow over his head and drew the bunk curtain with his other hand. Heart hammering, Pete get up and says

“Get your leash, Hem!” Which doesn’t work in this timeline either, so Pete gets it himself. The bus wasn’t moving, so he figures it’s safe to disembark for a while. Pete needs to think. He steps out to find himself in a parking lot – tour buses, vans and cars take up most of the available space. Pete smiles despite himself as he recognises some of them. To judge by the lineup, it is either 2004 or 2005. From which Pete could only conclude that, unless the new season of Punk’d was going to some truly astonishing lengths for verisimilitude, he has accidentally acquired the power of time travel.

*

One upside to having an – _unusual_ brain, Pete had often mused, was that when something truly bizarre and inexplicable happened, he tended to adjust more quickly than a person with more orderly neural pathways. Thus, instead of suffering a total nervous breakdown at his realization, Pete is just pacing around the parking lot and trying to figure out his next move. It’s too early for many people to be up and about yet – there are a couple of roadies hauling black boxes out of the back of a van, some of the kids in a young band are giggling over a cell phone on the other side of the lot, and a guy wearing a guitar case is smoking near his bus. Whenever people travelled back in time on TV, it was either to fix some mistake in their lives, or because they’d accidentally done something to disturb the proper timeline. The list of mistakes Pete could theoretically be here to fix is so long as to be totally unhelpful, but so far as he knows, it doesn’t include accidentally screwing up the entire course of the universe. His therapist was always saying he took everything too personally, after all.

“You’re up early.”

“HOLY SHIT!”

Pete jumps about seven feet in the air and possibly suffers a minor heart attack, before turning around to find twenty-four-year-old Mikey Way leaning casually on a trailer. It’s the mid 2000s, his brain supplies helpfully, and of course – they’d been practically best friends back then. Jesus Christ, Mikey still has the glasses and his dirty blond hair is spiked up in all directions. He’s wearing a green t-shirt and skinny jeans which aren’t actually all that clingy on his stick-thin legs. This is such a trip, but if anyone is better educated than Pete in implausible time travel scenarios…

“Mikey!” Pete grabs his shoulders. “For the love of God, tell me you’re my spirit guide!”

Mikey stares at him. To the casual observer, it would appear his expression doesn’t change at all, but to those who know him the lift of one eyebrow is enough to indicate his surprise.

“Spirit…. guide?”

“Guide! Mentor! Crazy professor stand-in! You know, I can’t have just travelled back in time on my own, there has to be a guide! Campbell’s archetypes, Mikey, you know this! SOMEONE AROUND HERE HAS TO KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING!”

Maybe he spoke too soon on avoiding the nervous breakdown.

“Okay.” Mikey pushes his glasses up, then presses his index fingers together in front of his face. He’s frowning. “Okay. One, are you drunk?”

“No! I’m from the future!”

“You’re not from the future Pete, we just left Florida a couple of hours ago. The super soakers, remember? Patrick kicked you off the bus cos you got glitter glue inside his new microphone?”

“Ohhhhh yeah I remember that. But – that wasn’t me. Well, it was me, but that was past-me, I mean it wasn’t now-me, and the me you’re actually talking to is from 2011. I went to sleep in the future, I was married, then I just woke up here like twenty minutes ago. And for the record I replaced that microphone in Canada.”

Mikey continues to stare at Pete through narrowed eyes. Then:

“You were married?”

“I am married! To Ashlee!”

“Ashlee….?”

“Ashlee Simpson!”

“Yeah alright. Nice try, Pete,” Mikey rolls his eyes and claps Pete on the shoulder. “I just came out to ask if you know where the schedule’s posted.”

“I AM NOT MESSING WITH YOU!” Maybe there’s something in his tone, (or maybe he and Mikey were close enough, once), that Mikey does a sort of double take at that. Pete’s hands are in his own hair and he’s pulling the strands out, which he hasn’t done in years – its muscle memory this body hasn’t forgotten yet. The kids in the young band stare at them.

“Alright,” says Mikey quietly. He and puts his own hands up in a conciliatory gesture. “Alright. Okay. Ashlee _Simpson_ though? As in, the pop star?”

“That’s what you’re stuck on here? That I married Ashlee, not so much the whole ‘accidentally travelled back in time, presumably to redeem past mistakes or otherwise alter the timeline’?”

“She just doesn’t seem like your type is all,” Mikey shrugs. “Scratch that. She seems like the kind of girl you’d mess around with, not like, love and marriage.” That might have hit a little close to home, because Pete says,

“She’s having my kid.”

“Woah,” Mikey’s eyes widen just perceptibly.

“I know right?”

“Well the bad news is, I’m not your spirit guide,” Mikey shrugs. “I never met anyone who time travelled before. But we could talk to my brother about it.”

“Has _he_ met anyone who time travelled before?”

“Eh. Hard to say,” Mikey tilts his head to the side. “But if we’re looking for an authority on paranormal phenomena, there are definitely worse places we could start. Gerard’s kind of a…” he pauses.

“Weirdo?” Pete offers.

“Totally. Not just that, though. He’s like – sensitive, to this sort of thing. Our grandma tried to teach us both stuff, but he was way more into it than I was. I just never had the aptitude.”

“And - what exactly is ‘this sort of thing’?” Pete asks carefully.

“Well you know,” Mikey pushes his glasses up his nose again. “Magic.”

Magic. Sure. Pete’s had conversations about magic with Mikey Way, but he’d typically assumed they were talking metaphorically. Pete had been, at least. It’s as good a lead as he’s got. One’s thing for sure, though: he’s not taking his dog on My Chem’s bus. Bulldogs have enough breathing problems already.

“Hey Hemmy,” he says in a fake-excited voice. “Where’s Joe, Hemmy? Go find Joe.” Hemmy gives him a look like, we just left Joe, you dumbass, so Pete tells him: “Joe’s got treats,” which is probably true, even if they aren’t the kind of treats Hem would be interested in or permitted. Hemmy wags his tail disloyally and goes trotting back to the bus they’d been sharing since Patrick and Andy made the ‘adult people ground rules for survivable living situations’ list.

Pete doesn’t know Gerard Way that well – they’re more friendly acquaintances than actual friends. There’s probably a number for him in his phone but whether it works is anyone’s guess. He has a vague recollection that Gerard once told him he liked Pete’s lyrics, but possibly that hasn’t happened yet or possibly Pete was high on Valium and misremembering. Back in 2011, they’d last seen each other at some awards thing – Pete recalls that Gerard as a slim, intense arty type with clear sharp eyes and dyed pillar-box red hair to go with his Killjoy alter ego. The guy who stumbles to the door of My Chem’s bus – after Mikey has been calling his phone continuously for twelve and half minutes – is dishevelled and unkempt and a little chubby, pale with shadows under his eyes and black hair that sticks up every way like a bird’s nest. He smells like alcohol and sweat. Pete is taken aback, but Mikey isn’t surprised - naturally, he’s been watching this whole thing progress at close quarters, and doesn’t have the 2011 Gerard stored in his memory for comparison.

“What the shit, Mikey, it's not even nine yet – Oh hey Pete." Then he stares directly at Pete and his eyes go enormous. “Woah,” he says. “How did you do that?”

“Do what?” Pete’s heart is pounding.

“You’re in the wrong place, right? You don’t belong here?” He tilts his head. “You shouldn’t be in that body.”

“Yes!” Pete is both surprised and immensely relieved. Mikey appears to be neither.

“Time travel?” Gerard asks. “Or some sort of psychic transference?”

“Time travel, I guess.”

“How did you do it?”

“I didn’t do it!” says Pete.

“Well you must have,” Gerard says. “Nobody else did. Unless, have you pissed off any powerful wizards or mages lately? Alternatively, do any powerful mages or wizards owe you a favour? I gotta tell you I’m a mandatory reporter of magical crimes, assaults, harassment and blackmail, including crimes involving the manipulation of a legal magic worker, including but not limited to the unknowing and/ or accidental use of magic for nefarious purposes.”

Pete narrows his eyes at Gerard for a long moment. Gerard tilts his head to the side and mostly looks drunk.

“Okay,” says Pete. “Given current arrangements, I am forced to assume everything that just came out of your mouth was literal, truthful and not in any way a reference to Dungeons and Dragons. Thus yes. I have accidentally sent myself back in time, no magic crimes in involved so far as I know, and I need your help getting back to my own time, Gerard Way. You’re my only hope.”

“Cool,” Gerard nods approvingly, whether at the situation or the Star War reference, steps back to let Pete and Mikey into the bus. Just as Pete expected, it’s dim, hot, and extremely messy, smelling strongly of cigarette smoke and coffee. The vapor of alcohol is almost visible. There’s some muffled noise from the studio in the back, but the door to the bunk section is closed. “We’re gonna need some stuff.” Gerard starts rooting through a pile of t-shirts and books.

“Does he mean drugs?” Pete whispers.

“Probably not,” says Mikey.

“Ah ha!” Gerard holds a small wooden box in one hand and an open beer can in the other.

“Gee,” Mikey says disapprovingly.

“This is for ritualistic purposes, Mikey,” Gerard glares. “It’s important.”

“You’re not a _shaman_ ,” Mikey rolls his eyes.

“Closer than you.”

“Mikey don’t piss him off,” says Pete nervously. Gerard opens the wooden box to reveal that three sides are mirrors. The borders are intricately carved with vines and leaves. He props it open on the floor and gestures for Mikey and Pete to sit down.

“Like a séance?” Pete asks.

“Kinda. You can sit on the couch if you want, but I’m not sure what that brown stuff is so maybe don’t sit in it.”

“The floor’s fine,” says Pete.

Gerard nods again, and continues rummaging around until he finds a packet of incense sticks. He drops two into a glass jar and two into a coke can before lighting them. The air in the bus becomes even thicker, but the Ways appear not even to notice Gerard lays the wooden box on the floor between the three of them, arranging the sides so that the panels reflect Pete, Mikey and Gerard in infinite regress.

“So,” Gerard says, sitting down and crossing his legs. He takes a mouthful of the beer, which must be warm, then props his chin on his hands, and stares at Pete. Pete starts to feel like he’s just embarked on the world’s weirdest course of therapy. “When did you first realize you’d travelled back in time?”

“When I woke up,” says Pete tells Gerard. “Like an hour ago.”

“And what’s the last thing you remember before that?”

Pete considers. There’s a headache building behind his eyes which the atmosphere on the bus really isn’t helping.

“Uh, I was asleep, I guess. In the LA house.”

“The LA house,” says Mikey dryly: “Wow.”

Pete ignores him.

“And before that?” says Gerard.

“I was on the roof. Not in that way! Just, you know, thinking about stuff. It was February.”

“You’re gonna have to get more specific. Maybe this will help.” Gerard picks up the mirror and tilts it towards Pete. Almost too fast to see, his hands make some sort of gesture over the frames. Pete thinks he’s imagined it, but then he looks into the glass and his heart skips a beat. He’s looking back at himself – his present self. In the central pane, its 2011 – he has short hair and the start of a beard and looks frankly, tired – but the side panels reflect him as he appears here, in 2005, all eyeliner and ambition and its weird as fuck. Then he blinks and the image is gone, but the memories are preserved, the anxiety and discomfort and outright fear:

“I’m having a kid!” He blurts.

“Okay, that one’s definitely outside of my expertise,” says Gerard. “There might be a shaman in Wichita who-“

“Not me personally!” Pete says. “Ashlee, my wife. We’re having a baby.”

“He’s married to Ashlee Simpson in the future,” says Mikey helpfully, managing to make it both a judgement and a genuine contribution to the conversation. “The pop star.”

“So I have to get back,” Pete stresses: “I have to get back because I’m going to be a dad, holy shit I’m going to be a dad.”

“Yeah but,” Gerard says. It sounds like he might be trying to sound reassuring. “Obviously you have to do something here before that can happen. Were you worried about having the kid?”

“No! Yes! Obviously, I’m terrified, and I definitely didn’t mean for it to happen, but I love it already you guys, I want to be a good dad so much. I can’t…I can’t do anything to ruin this for my kid. Either here or – back there. Forward there.”

“So what could you be sent back to change? Be careful!” Gerard holds a hand up. “Don’t tell us anything that could change the future. I mean you’ve already changed the future, by being here, but don’t fuck it up worse. Like if Mikey becomes the President or something, we probably shouldn’t know about that.”

“How has he changed the future,” says Mikey carefully, “If he’s already come back and done whatever in the past by the time it happens? Like, this Pete remembers a Warped where, presumably, this didn’t happen, but now when he gets to the future it will have happened already so whatever he does in the past now is already accomplished.”

  
They all stare at each other for a long minute.

“We should probably just not worry about that too much,” Gerard says.

“Cool,” says Pete.

“I mean theoretically, if there are infinite universes, all this stuff is already happening anyway in infinite timelines, but we can’t concern ourselves with that. All that we have to decide,” he appears to think of something, and draws himself up portentously: “Is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

There’s a pause.

“Did you just quote Gandalf?” says Pete.

“Shut up it’s a good quote,” says Gerard. He downs the remainder of his beer.

“So anyway,” says Pete. “It can’t be that I fuck my marriage up prematurely. Because I’m absolutely meant to have this kid. I know it.”

“Prematurely?” Mikey says in that horrifically perceptive way he has: “Wow.”

“So it can only be the band,” Pete blows his breath out. “It has to be.”

“Wait, you want to fuck the band up?” Gerard is confused.

“No, I have to stop the band getting fucked up! We broke up, you guys. I mean, we’re on hiatus.”

Pause.

“Woah,” says Mikey sombrely: “Hiatus.”

“Right,” says Pete miserably.

“Okay,” Gerard says. “So go find your band, and tell them to never break up with you.”

“Uh,” Pete says.

“I’m a mystic, not a relationship counsellor,” Gerard says. “You’ll have to figure that part out on your own. But….”

“But what?” Pete says.

Gerard clears his throat. “I understand you and Patrick are like, whatever. But you can’t just walk up to him and tell him you’re a time traveller.”

“I did with Mikey,” Pete points out.

“Well yeah but – me and Mikey are kind of different. We were raised, you know…in the tradition.”

“The magic tradition,” Mikey helps.

“Clearly you’ve got some kind of aptitude,” says Gerard, “seeing as you were able to wish yourself back here-“

“I didn’t –“

“-Will yourself, whatever. Wishes can be subconscious too you know. But normals generally don’t do so well with the revelation of magic, particularly when it’s someone they’re close with. They tend to freak out and cause, well, disruptions. Which can be hard to repair. Time streams are a delicate business – it could well be that Fall Out Boy bro– went on hiatus _because_ someone fucked with a timestream. Your task could be to put things back where they’re supposed to be.”

“Patrick wouldn’t freak out,” Pete argues. ‘Where they’re supposed to be’ engraves itself in his brain.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Gerard shrugs. “But we shouldn’t risk it, for Patrick’s own safety. Just keep it on the down low for now, okay Pete? You can always talk to me and Mikey, or  
come to me if you have questions.”

“I’ll try,” Pete sighs. “I can’t lie to my Trick, though.”

“So just don’t bring it up.”

Pete agrees. The agenda to stop the hiatus doesn’t quite make sense, because hello – he woke up it 2005, not 2009 when it all went to shit – but it’s the best lead Pete has, so he puts his head together with Mikey Way and they start a list called REASONS FALL OUT BOY MUST STAY TOGETHER, all in caps. At the top they write

  
_\- If Fall Out Boy breaks up, Pete will get sent back in time and possibly break the universe_

Then they add

_\- Fall Out Boy is awesome_

_\- Fall Out Boy is needed by the world people with good taste in music and emo kids_

_\- Fall Out Boy is the balance of four personalities, and it works._

Then they run out of steam for a bit. Pete has lots of ideas, like

_-Without Fall Out Boy we are miserable_

And

_\- Patrick should never have to hear the shit assholes will say_

And

_\- The truth is I’m lost without you_

But he can neither write that nor express it in a way that will make sense in 2005. Mikey is helping as best he can in this timeline:

“Patrick would never get on a stage without you, I mean, and everyone should know what an awesome musician he is,” he points out.

“Yeah,” says Pete through gritted teeth. They don’t have a great plan, but Pete figures his best bet is to go observe his band in their natural habitat, and look out for any clues or cracks in their foundation which might foreshadow their breakup. Pete’s spent (will spend) days going over what he could have done differently– he should have listened more, given more compliments, he was always too wrapped up in his own dramas, was Patrick ever happy? - and by the time they’ve finished its ten thirty and Pete figures he can risk waking Patrick up. Pete and Mikey emerge from the bus, blinking into the daylight.

Woah.

More people are about now, and Pete’s just gaping at all of them, faces and names thudding into his brain right out of the past – present – Cassidee, Jeremy, Haley, Bert, Quinn – and God, they all look so _young,_ everybody looks so young. Pete is staring. They glance back, smiling, mildly curious, some of the baby bands still impressed by him and Mikey. Where are they now? Last he heard, The Used were still together and recording in 2011. Huh. There was an irony. Mikey finds the FOB buses unerringly, because Pete is already lost, and as he raises his hand to knock he realises his heart is pounding. He’s more than nervous, he has full on stage-fright. He’s about to meet Patrick all over again - _meet Patrick_ , his best-ever-friend, the better part of his creative being and the other side of his brain. In any timeline, this is momentous. Not to mention - _this_ version of Patrick hasn’t had 2009-11 Pete inflicted upon him yet. Pete has six further years of neuroses and complications Patrick hasn’t had time to prepare for. Last time Pete had seen Patrick, he’d been losing weight. He’d shaved his sideburns and dyed his hair platinum blonde. They’d been meeting in a coffee shop, - just for coffee - Patrick been wearing a suit jacket and pressed trousers. He’d ordered herbal tea instead of a latte. He looked sharp, and he sounded sharp, and their conversation is too painful to think about right now so Pete squashes it before the memories can get him in even more trouble. The bus door slides open, and young Patrick is standing there in all his 5”4 barefoot glory. He’s soft and rounded again, one side of his face is all creased and red from his pillow. He’s rumpled, he’s squinting into the sunlight and Pete loves him like breathing.

“What?” Patrick says.

“Trick – Trick –" Pete stammers and Patrick rolls his eyes, holds the door and says

“Come in then, I’ll make you coffee.”

“I love you,” says Pete.

“I love you too, Pete,” Patrick sounds a little mystified and perhaps still not fully awake, fumbling around the tiny kitchen to get mugs and spoons. “How do you take it, Mikey?”

“Black, no sugar please,” says Mikey politely. Patrick makes a face but does it for him, before handing Pete his usual cup of vaguely coffee-flavoured confectionary. _He remembers_ , Pete’s heart sings: _Of course he remembers, dumbass. He hasn’t had time to forget yet._ There’s a noise from the back room, and Andy emerges, wearing white cotton yoga pants and no shirt. About half his tattoos are missing, his hair is long, and he still wears the wire framed glasses that made him look like a geography teacher.

“Hi,” he says. Somehow that’s the last straw. Pete is overwhelmed. Forget rifts in the fabric of time, the difference between what he felt then and feels now is causing a rift in the fabric of his chest cavity. This body remembers anxiety attacks, trained to rollercoasters rather than the constant low-level unhappiness of 2011.

“I’ve got to go,” he blurts, and runs. Maybe time’s playing tricks again because it seems everything speeds up – vision, sounds - he just about avoids a collision with two roadies carrying a speaker and the next thing he knows, he’s hunched over the toilet in a service station bathroom, water on his face, breathing heavily and trying not to puke. Jesus. He hadn’t known, hadn’t realized till he was back here how _bad_ things were in LA, how out of sync he’d been with _what he’s supposed to be doing_ , but he’s got to get back because he’s _having a baby_ and Oh God. Those commenters on the message board were so right. Pete is so deeply, thoroughly unprepared for any of this.

“Pete?”

From outside the stall, Patrick’s clear voice clashes with the door squeak. He must have followed him. Fuck. Of course, in this universe, it’s only been a few months since Pete swallowed a bottle of Ativan then phoned in a suicide note to their manager.

“Pete are you okay?” Patrick asks again.

“Uhh, sure,” Pete rasps and coughs, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Are you sick?”

“Uhh yeah, sick. Sorry. Didn’t want to get puke on this bus, you know?”

“That’s unusually considerate of you.” Patrick pushes the door to Pete’s stall, cautiously, and Pete squints up at him. Haloed by the bathroom’s electric lights, his hair is sticking up in every direction. He leans against the doorframe. “We’re on at 2 you know. Are you gonna be okay to play? Do you want me to ask Mikey to fill in or something?”

“Nah that’s…” Pete considers. It’s been awhile since he played anything from their early albums (and let’s face it, he was never the world’s greatest musician to begin with). But presumably if this body can remember how to have a visceral freak out it can also remember chord progressions, so he says “No no, that’s cool, I can play,” and he does. Not brilliantly by any stretch of the imagination, but he makes it through the set, and the ecstatic faces of the kids and Patrick sending him that little crinkled smile as the drums move the stage and the crowd screams his own words back at him course through his veins like fire. How could they have given this up? Except for the constant awareness of this isn’t real this isn’t yours you don’t belong here.

“Great show!” says Joe as they file offstage. They all high five and Patrick is looking at Pete strangely:

“Everything okay?” he asks.

“Sure,” says Pete quickly. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“No reason,” Patrick shrugs. “You seemed a little off is all. And you were sick earlier so…”

“Yeah I’m fine,” says Pete.

“Alright,” says Patrick mildly and holds his hands up. “Just asking is all.”

“I’m sorry,” Pete apologises immediately, because for all he knows snapping at Patrick could he (have been) the first event in chain that leads them down the path of total destruction.

“That’s alright,” says Patrick but he walks off pretty quickly. So Pete spends the rest of the day being super nice to his band, to the point he’s getting people coffee and trying not to let his stuff migrate all over both the buses. He even resists an epic that’s-what-she-said joke that Joe walks directly into, because he knows Joe is sick of that joke and doesn’t like being interrupted when he’s talking about work. The problem is that none of this progress is measurable. So, that night, following a series of rapid texts with Mikey, he asks Patrick and Andy to come over to their bus and gets Joe off the Nintendo (yes, Nintendo). After all, he’s Pete Wentz. If he can’t talk himself out of this, it’s worse than he thought.

“So is this band meeting or…?” Andy asks.

“Yes. No. Kinda,” says Pete. Maybe it is worse than he thought.

“You didn’t send me anything,” Patrick frowns, in that particular way that makes Pete warm inside, because his words matter to Patrick and Patrick cares that he gets to see them before anyone else, whilst they’re still muddled and fucked-up and out of order.

“It’s not lyrics,” Pete says. “It’s just – about this tour.” They all look up at that, worried, and the irony is they think _Pete_ is going to do something to put this in jeopardy,  
when little do they know he’s the one trying to _save_.

“Is there a problem?” Joe asks. “Is that why you’re being so nice to us? Is this a trick?”

“No! Not at all! Kind of the opposite. I wanted to make you guys feel appreciated, alright? I wanted to thank you for like – sticking with me. I know I’m not always the easiest person in the world – or like, the best friend I could be – but this band is the best thing I’ve done in my stupid life and I just wanted to thank you all for doing this with me.”

They all stare at him for a long moment. Then Joe says,

“Do we get presents?”

“Shut up Joe,” Patrick says and hits him in the side. Pete is overwhelmed momentarily by how much he loves Patrick. “Pete, don’t worry about. This band is the best thing  _any_ of us have done. I’d work in an office if it wasn’t for you.” He looks at Pete quizzically.

“So you’re all 100% sure this is totally, absolutely, what you want to be doing?”

“Well duh,” says Joe. “What else would we do?”

“Well you’re all like, super talented,” Pete handwaves. “You could probably be in any bands you wanted to.”

“Yeah, no,” says Patrick. “Can you honestly see me singing without you guys? Or even, I don’t know, being in the general vicinity of anything approaching a spotlight?”

Jesus. Whatever has done this to Pete is clearly not finished fucking with him. ‘I _have_ seen it!’ he wants to yell, but instead he excuses himself rapidly, and ends up banging on the door of My Chem’s tour bus less than five minutes later. “I gotta tell Patrick,” he says as soon as Gerard opens the door.

“No!” says Gerard. “Remember what I told you, Pete! Irreparable damage to the timestream!”

“But you know!” Pete exclaims. “And besides, I can’t do this without him! I can’t even figure out what I’m supposed to he doing! I’m never gonna get out of here without his help, Gerard! Isn’t that going to ruin the timestream?

“It could. Or this could be the exact way things are supposed to go. And me and Mikey were raised in the tradition, so though telling us isn’t ideal, we have the knowledge to apply damage limitation and hopefully prevent a butterfly effect. Telling other people is dangerous, not just for you, but for them too. Making Patrick aware of what’s going on whilst the time streams are still in flux could turn out really badly for him.”

“But - the thing is - no-one’s thinking about quitting the band here. They’re all perfectly happy. Or they were until I started being all nice to them, now they’re just suspicious and confused.”

“Well,” Gerard leans against the doorframe. “It’s possible you were sent to the wrong time, I guess.”

“Wh – what?! Why didn’t you tell me that in the first place?!”

“Well, the only times I’ve seen it happen were as a result of a spell or curse gone wrong. Which is not to say it _couldn’t_ happen any other way. But you said no-one had cursed you so….”

“Dude,” says Pete. “Who _are_ you? How do you know all this stuff?”

Gerard looks shifty. “It kind of – runs in the family. So in any case, since you’re obviously receptive, if you can figure out where you’re supposed to be in time I might be able to help.”

“I’m SUPPOSED to be in 2011!” Pete half yells.

“Evidently not,” says Gerard.

“Okay,” Pete blows his breath out and runs a hand through his hair. He hasn’t straightened it since he woke up here; it's reverting to his natural frizzy curls. “If I’m meant to be keeping the band together, I should probably be in 2009. That’s when things started to go really downhill.”

“Alright,” Gerard looks resolute. “That’s’ a start. I’m gonna call some people and do some studying. Come back after the show tonight. You...you work on cultivating your powers.”

“My what now?”

“I don’t know Wentz, you’re the one who can time travel. Get Andy to show you some of Jedi training sequences.” Gerard makes a gesture that might be meant to reference as a lightsabre battle, possibly between dyspraxic pandas. "With great power comes great responsibility.”

“That’s – actually not a bad suggestion.” Not the lightsabre part, but Andy meditates, which is supposed to bring you to a higher consciousness of your soul, right?

“Good,” says Gerard, and closes the door on Pete.

“No,” says Andy when Pete asks: “It’s not really about gaining consciousness. It’s more about letting go of your idea of self – abandoning the illusion of ego.”

“I seriously doubt Pete’s ego is an illusion,” says Joe.

“Whatever,” says Pete wearily. “Can you teach me?”

“Sure,” Andy says. Which is how Pete finds himself under a tree in a field of yellow flowers somewhere in the Louisiana wilderness. They’re not due onstage until nine that night, so Andy borrowed a roadie’s car and drove the two of them a few miles from the cavalcade.

“Do you always do this?” Pete asks. “Like, when we’re in cities? When you just take off for the day are you meditating in fields and shit?”

“Sometimes” says Andy.

“And the other times?”

Andy just smiles. He sits down next to Pete, unbothered by the damp grass, and says, “Close your eyes.”

“Done.”

“Stop peeping.”

“I’m not peeping!”

“Yes you are, I can see your eyes are open.”

“Well, then you’re peeping too.”

“I’m not the one who wants to learn.”

It’s not the most successful session – Pete has extreme difficulty with what Andy calls ‘being’; as opposed to ‘doing’:

“You don’t have to be doing something all the time,” he says when Pete’s given up.

“Yes I do,” Pete complains. “If I stop doing things I’ll just go nuts. More nuts.”

“Hmm,” says Andy, neither affirming nor denying. Then he asks, “Is that why you did it?”

For a split second, Pete thinks he’s talking about time travel and his brain gives a 404-error report before he realises Andy doesn’t know about that, and he can only be referring to Best Buy. The truth is Pete doesn’t remember a lot about that night, just a surge of drugged panic when he realized what he’d done, and later the humiliation of hospital.

“Because I thought- “ Andy says, then stops.

“Thought what?” says Pete.

“No it’s – it’s not my business, really.”

“Yeah, cos I’m always so protective of my personal business,” Pete says. “Come on. Look who you’re talking to?”

“I thought it was because you couldn’t see that….. he does love you. Just not – in the way you want. And maybe you couldn’t deal with that.”  
Pete stares at Andy for long moment. Andy meets his gaze with sincere hazel eyes. The thing with Andy is – he’s basically the most authentic person Pete has ever met. He is possibly incapable of lying. Pete says

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“The Patrick thing,” Andy says, sympathetically but like it’s totally obvious. “You know you can’t just change orientation, Pete. It’s not a choice. Patrick loves you but he’s straight.”

“I know he’s straight,” says Pete. Then he throws himself down in the grass and hits his head on the ground repeatedly, not hard enough to damage himself but enough to hurt.

“Stop that,” Andy reprimands, and inserts his hand between Pete’s head and the dirt, so Pete has to either stop or hurt him. Instead he rolls over and looks at Andy upside down, and is overcome by the fact that holy shit, this Andy is younger than him. Andy, the smart one, the wise one, is younger than him here and Pete’s still trying to depend on him and make him help. All his guys are so fucking innocent here. Jesus.

“How do you all put up with me?” he says plaintively.

“Don’t start that,” says Andy, so Pete stops himself and they head back to cavalcade. Marcus gives them low-level shit for sneaking off without security, but they bribe him with beer and get ready to go onstage. They close the set with ‘Saturday’, like usual, and Patrick across at Pete during the instrumental, smiles a little quizzically. Pete raises his eyebrows back, then he gets it. Patrick is waiting for Pete’s approach, he’s waiting for Pete to do the leaning thing, he won’t initiate it because that’s what Pete does. Pete should be there already, they should be playing in sync already with their heads on each other’s shoulders. Pete missed his cue. He stumbles up – but it’s too late, Patrick’s turning away. Disappointment flashes across his face, brief but clear. At this rate, Pete’s journey into the past is going to be what breaks the band up, his messed up displaced 2011 brain ruining the good thing they had.

“Get me out of here,” he appeals to the Way brothers after the show. They’re back on the bus, as is Frank Iero, who is talking to his girlfriend on the phone in the bunk area. Ray is making a sandwich and their drummer is off with some other band. The Ways seem entirely unconcerned by the fact that Ray and Frank can hear their conversation.

“I’ve been reading,” Gerard declares. He’s all sweaty and messed up from My Chem’s set, makeup smeared down his face, hair sticking up in an appropriately mad scientist style.

“And I have come to the conclusion that you, Pete Wentz, are a Disney Princess.”

“No way!” Pete objects. “I’m the lovably adventurous rogue! Or at worst, the comic sidekick.”

“Dude, you totally wished for this,” Mikey says. He’s sitting cross-legged on the couch eating cereal from the box. With a fork.

“You got here from the summer of 2011, right? I consulted a friend of ours. She’s a professor in psychology who sees the future, but keep that part on the downlow because might say she got the position by unfair advantage. Which, what the hell, am I right? It’s not like she asked to be a psychic.”

“So our friend did some calculations,” Mikey says, searching the remainder of his cereal for marshmallow bits, “And she thinks there will be a comet in June of 2011 that will be visible with the naked eye. You said you were on the roof and like, miserable but you weren’t about to jump, so…”

“Are you saying I did this by subconsciously wishing on a shooting star?”

“You got any better theories?”

“Okay.” Pete runs his hands through his hair. “Okay, this is progress. So presumably I just have to do the same thing again, but backwards. When’s the next comet?”

“Yeah one problem,” says Gerard. “No more astrological events for like, six months.”

“Are you shitting me?”

The Ways shake their heads in unison, looking creepily like those collectable dolls people put on their mantelpiece. Anyone who says they don’t look like brothers needs to see them make the same expression at the same time.

“Ever wished on anything else?” asks Gerard.

“Sure. Lots of things. Can’t say it ever _worked_ before.”

“Maybe you just didn’t want it enough,” suggests Frank, who has suddenly appeared in the doorway.

“You too?” asks Pete. “Is this entire band invested in the secrets of cultic magic? Cos I really thought that was just. Like. An aesthetic thing.”

“Sometimes the best hiding place is in plain sight,” says Gerard sagely. “But in fairness, Pete none of us have ever disrupted the timestream very much.”

Pete nods resignedly.

“So what else have you wished on?” Frank presses.

“Candles,” Pete says. “Wishing wells…wishbones….”

“You’re a vegetarian,” says Mikey.

“Yeah but I use other people’s.”

“Pete that’s gross.”

“Not like stranger’s people! People I know! I don’t get them out of the trash or anything!”

“What about dandelions?” says Gerard.

“Yes!” Pete jumps up. “We’re surrounded by fields there must be some dandelions around here.”

“Uhh we’re on the road Pete.”

So they are. Whilst they’ve been talking the buses have moved out, and Pete checks his phone to find a text from Patrick reading ‘You better be on a bus’ to which he replies ‘maybe I’m on ur bus’ and tries to do a creepy face emoji before he realises this 2005 phone can’t do that. Sure enough Patrick takes the bait and texts back ‘Seriously fucker this is not funny where are u!!”’ and he’s really mad because that’s the only time he resorts to text speak. Pete feels himself smile as he texts back ‘MCR bus. Chill xxx’ and when he looks up both the Ways plus Frank Iero are looking at him with their eyebrows raised.

“What?” he asks. He stops smiling.

“New girlfriend? That was fast,” Gerard says.

“No, I was, I was just talking to Patrick.”

“Hmm,” says Mikey.

“Hmm what?”

The Ways share a look, and hold a silent conversation that deeply annoying way they can do through the medium of eyebrows.

 _”Whaaaat?”_ Pete says again. “Guys if you have any ideas now you better fuckin tell me right now.”

“It’s just,” Mikey shrugs. “The way you smile. When you get a text from him. Are you sure getting the band back together was your wish was about?”

“I’m having a kid,” Pete reminds them. “I love my kid.” And he does love his kid. Already. There’s no possible way he was sent back to stop his child from being born (unless he’s about to produce America’s next great serial killer, but he didn’t _know_ that at the time of making the wish, unless his future-future self somehow communicated a subliminal message to his actual-future self. This is getting out of hand now).

“Right,” says Gerard. “And you’re married.”

“To _Ashlee Simpson_ ,” says Mikey.

“Mikey,” Gerard reprimands.

“Let’s just find something I can wish properly on,” Pete sighs.

“I have a penny,” Ray offers. Apparently he’s been listening all along and the whole magic-is-real thing isn’t new to him either. “We could toss it into a body of water.”

“I don’t see any bodies of water around here,” Pete says.

“Well, we could toss it into the toilet.”

“No solids in the bus toilet,” Gerard says.

“It’s a penny!” says Ray, “It’s not gonna clog anything.”

“Okay but if it does I’m not covering for you.”

Feeling highly ridiculous, Pete takes the penny. He and heads for the lavatory, tosses it down the shoot and thinks very distinctly, ‘I wish I had never travelled back in time’. He’s a lawyer’s kid - no way is he screwing himself over with ambiguous phrasing. The penny clinks against the hard plastic and disappears down the hole.

“Feel any different?” Gerard asks.

“No. But then I didn’t the first time either. I just went to sleep and woke up in 2005.”

“Maybe you have to go to sleep before it works.”

So naturally Pete can’t get himself to sleep that night. They were playing late – Pete dives into the show with maximum physical energy, matching Joe spin for spin and literally throwing himself into the crowd when they finish with ‘Great Theft Autumn’. The kids scream and pull him right and left, rip his shirt, and he can see Patrick wince from the stage. He always plays it off as being worried that their bassist could be put out of commission, which is particularly transparent when they’re surrounded by bassists who could fill in on Pete’s part with their eyes closed. When it’s over, Trick smiles at him – that cute small smile he only does when he doesn’t think anyone’s looking – and Pete throws his arms around him, kisses his face, full of love and adrenalin and just a little sad that tonight – this night – is the end of his time with 2005 Patrick, the Patrick he can’t have again even when he goes back to his own time. Pete is a selfish fuck. There are afterparties – Pete times it carefully, staying out as late he dares to get more tired, but leaving enough hours till they have to be up that he may have some hope of winding down and falling asleep. It doesn’t work. Joe is out, which doesn’t help – Pete has a slightly higher chance of getting to sleep when he can listen to another person sleeping. He jerks off perfunctorily in the bathroom, not even thinking about anything, just to get some dopamine flowing, then lies down in his bunk, tossing and turning and kicking the covers off and pulling them back on again. He lets Hemmy up, then puts Hemmy down because he’s trying to take up the whole pillow again, and as the dog grumps and waddles off to the kitchen, Pete suddenly remembers that he has sleeping pills in this timeline, all prescribed and legit and everything. He gets up and goes to the cabinet, finds the bottle. It says take one or two pills as required, and he figures this body is acclimated enough, so he takes two, and miracle of miracles it works.

But the wish does not work. Pete wakes up in 2005 in the same bunk he went to sleep. The only difference is Joe came back at some time in the early hours and is currently asleep above his head.

“You probably didn’t mean it enough,” says Gerard on the phone that night. Pete went over to Patrick’s bus as soon as they hit a service station. Patrick is working and Andy has disappeared, so Pete has to content himself with lying in Patrick’s bed.

“What do you mean I didn’t mean it?!” Pete exclaims. “I meant it!”

“Well clearly you didn’t _want_ it enough,” says Gerard. “What did you wish for?”

“I wished I never travelled back in time. So I could be, you know, back at home where my wife and future kid are…”

“And if you’d wanted that, you’d never have travelled back in time in the first place. Look, Pete – I called me and Mikey’s grandma.”

“Is your grandma…”

“She’s a practitioner,” says Gerard calmly. “She would say witch, but you know how people who didn’t grow up in the culture react to that term. See, I just heard you draw your breath in, when I said witch. Which is ironic considering you’re clearly more naturally magical than any of us.”

“Naturally…magical?”

“You should really ask your parents about it when you get back,” Pete can practically see him handwave. “In any case, grandma says this whole thing is a result of your profound lack of self awareness and inability to know what you actually want-"

“I know what I-“

“So you can’t try to cheat the system with logic and precise verbal formulations. Try again – but this time, don’t think about what you’re doing too hard.”

Just then, Patrick sticks his head around the door to the bunks. “Pete, why are you in my bed? That better not be a dirty phone call. You get jizz in my bunk and you’re washing everything down to the mattress.”

“No-one,” Pete quickly presses the button to cut the call. He sighs and burrows into the blankets, which smell comfortingly like Patrick’s unwashed clothes. Patrick hesitates, then steps into the bunk area properly and closes the door behind him.

“You alright?” he asks.

“Yeah,” says Pete, but it comes out sad, and Patrick is already taking his shoes off. It’s been so long. But of course – they did – do – this all the time in 2005, no big deal, and then Patrick is sitting down, pushing Pete backwards as he climbs in. He’s just wearing a t-shirt and boxer shorts. Pete is overwhelmed. Patrick’s arms are pale and soft, barely visible freckles and a faint dusting of hair. He’s soft everywhere, here – belly, arms, thighs, and so warm, Southern heat and exertion and he smells faintly sweet-sharp, sweat and Axe body spray and just _him_ – that last time they’d met up, in 2011, the closest they’d gotten was a handshake. And now Patrick is pressed against him – of necessity, given the bunk size, saying

“Move over,” and it’s too much.

Pete bursts into tears.

Like an actual child, like the child he’s supposedly going to parent, he starts bawling, and this Patrick is so used to it he just sighs,

“Oh Pete,” and puts his arms around him, rubs slow circles into his back and instead of asking what’s wrong like you would with a rational human being. He goes, “Shhh…it’s alright. It’s alright. You’re okay…”

Pete is so close to just blurting it out, saying to hell with Gerard’s warnings, he’s probably fucked up the timestream so bad by now that one more little revelation isn’t going to matter. Only fear that the knowledge could hurt Patrick somehow is holding him back.

“Sorry,” he mumbles after a few minutes, once he’s managed to calm down. He’s soaked the shoulder of Patrick’s tee-shirt, gotten tears and snot all down him.

“Don’t be sorry,” Patrick moves his hand up from Pete’s back to brush his hair out of his face. “Are you sleeping? Did you sleep last night?

“Yeah.”

“Eating properly? You feel skinny.”

Pete suppresses a laugh at the irony of that – he could say ‘You should talk!’. But of course, this Patrick is innocent of all that, so he says,

“Yeah.”

“Taking your medications like you’re supposed to? Not skipping or taking too much?”

“Yeah, all that stuff. I just….”

“I know.” Apparently, in this year, he doesn’t need an excuse for an outbreak of random hysteria. Patrick props himself up on one elbow and leans over to kiss Pete on the side of his head, just above his ear. They say love is a function of brain chemistry, all the heart stuff just a metaphor, but Pete swears he can literally feel the swelling in his chest, his whole heart overflowing with how much he loves Patrick. Why didn’t he appreciate it when he could be with Patrick every day, touch him whenever he wanted, play with him onstage and hang out with him in the bus and cuddle up in the bunk with him when he needed to? Why did he abuse the privilege? There was a cartoon, once, supposed to illustrate the tragedy of the commons, where a tree grew golden apples and all the villagers just took them until it was empty and the tree withered up, but Pete can be greedy enough for a whole village all by himself. Unable to verbalize it, he squeezes Patrick tight:

“Uh, Pete, oxygen,” Patrick reminds him, squeaking a little at the pressure, so Pete lets him go and turns over so that his face his buried in the pillow.

“Go to sleep,” Patrick pats his back. “It will be better in the morning.”

“Hmm,” Pete.

In the morning, it's 2009.

*

Pete wakes up in a cream-and-gold themed hotel room with an ensuite bathroom and a minibar. It takes him far less time to realize what’s happened this time – he stumbles up, looks in the mirror, checks his emo bangs and the faux election propaganda stuff they’d been using as promo scattered around the room, and he knows what’s happening. It’s the Folie era and Fall Out Boy is famous. In this timeline, there’s a working number for Gerard Way near the top of his phone contacts. The clock on his phone says its 22:48, which is basically mid-morning by My Chem Time. Gerard doesn’t pick up, but Pete leaves a message asking him to call him back as soon as possible, and tries Mikey. Mikey picks up, but he sounds drunk as shit. Now that Pete thinks about it, 2009 wasn’t a great time for Mikey either. Pete tries a few times to explain what’s going on but it’s a lost cause so he just says, ‘Call me when you’re sober’ and goes back to investigating the hotel room. He appears to be on a promo shoot for Folie – not a specific shoot he remembers, but there were so many, that’s not necessarily a reflection on the timeline. What he can’t find is any sort of schedule or information about what he’s supposed to be doing that day. He goes through his phone, then the bedside drawer – which turns up a truly alarming amount of Klonopin, but no diary. Pete makes a mental note to find out precisely what pills this body issued to taking. His first impulse is naturally to ask Patrick, but he’s trying to keep the band together, not get himself pulled out for psychiatric intervention. Patrick would totally rat him out, too. He’s done it before.

Pete goes and knocks on the room door opposite, figuring there’s a decent chance it will be one of his guys. It’s a middle-aged man with a beer gut pushing his striped pyjamas down to a place Pete doesn’t want to look, and he’s pissed to be woken up.

“You asshole kids think you own the place -"

“Sorry!” Pete holds his hands up. “Just, have you seen any more of us asshole kids around? Maybe my height, tattoos, hats…?”

Beer gut rolls his eyes and closes the door on him. Pete tries the next room. Thankfully –

“Joe!” he exclaims.

“What man?” Joe sounds tired, like he did the last time Pete woke up in a different year - except this Joe sounds tired in a different way. Less sleepy than weary. His hair is long and dark, and he’s grown a beard.

“N-nothing,” Pete says. To be honest, he’s shocked. Joe is looking at him like he’s a vague acquaintance, a colleague he’s obliged to be somewhat polite to. It’s just terrible. “Just, when’s call time? I, uh, forgot.”

“Seven.”

“Thanks.”

“Okay,” Joe gives him a weird look, but it's more pissed off than concerned Pete might be going insane again. He starts to close the door.

“Wait!” Pete says. “Wait. Where’s Patrick?”

“In his room I presume,” says Joe, and he sounds so _bitter_ , Jesus. Joe shouldn’t sound like that.

“Which room?”

“Uh, 405 I think,” says Joe. Pete takes off down the hall, checking room numbers until he realises he’s on the wrong floor (And hello, what the fuck? Patrick’s staying on a different _floor_ to him?) and takes the stairs two at a time. He doesn’t have a plan of action - he just knows that now he’s here, it’s imperative he find Patrick and get him to change his mind. Of course, it all depends on Patrick. He’s the key. Pete had known it on the day he met Patrick, arms folded scowling on the doorstep in that legendary shorts-and-argyle combination Pete will one day have immortalized as a statue. He had known it the night of their first gig, their first album, their first Grammy nod, their first _Grammy_ \- and he had known it on the day Patrick sat him down and told him he didn’t want to do the band anymore. He hadn’t _quite_ gone so far as to tell Pete not to call him. But Pete can take a hint.

Patrick’s room is at the end of a long corridor, and Pete’s heart is beating fast when he gets there. He’s surprised to find his hands are shaking. They’re still doing the promo for _Folie_ , so the way he figures it they have at least a few months before Patrick drops the bombshell (not that he can stay here for months. Ashlee could have the baby!). He feels sick.

"We've got time, it's okay," he says to himself.

“I can hear you out there, Pete,” calls Patrick. "You might as well come in." Pete almost laughs with relief. At some level he’s apparently afraid that he will wake up in a timeline where Patrick doesn't exist – the worst possible trick the Universe could lay on him.

What he finds isn’t too much kinder though.

“What do you want?” Patrick asks when Pete opens the door. He sounds worse than disinterested. He sounds _cold_.

“Oh, I, uh,” Pete stammers. “I was gonna down to the bar for bit. Thought I’d see if you wanted to come with…”

There’s a pause, then Patrick says, “I told you not to disturb me. I’m working.”

“Oh okay. Sorry.” He lets his voice come out as small and sad as he feels, and any other iteration of Patrick would have been all over that, asking was he okay, did he want to talk, but this Patrick just rolls his eyes and turns back to his laptop, which is open to an editing program. Green lines representing layered sound zig-zag up and down, narrowing and widening in places. He waits for Patrick to tell him he can sit down.

“Shut the door on your way out,” says Patrick. Pete really does go down to the bar then. He orders a double Bacardi and coke and drinks it as fast as he can. There’s a very attractive woman in a cocktail dress giving Pete a clear one over. He spares a minute to wonder whether it counted cheating if you were inhabiting a version of yourself that wasn’t married yet. But he’s not really interested. He’d forgotten how alcohol hit him so much harder when he was on Klonopin. Now that he’s reminded, he orders a second. His head is full of pale skin and red-blond hair and blue eyes, beautiful even when they’re angry. Especially when they’re angry.

“Rough night?” asks the bartender, who doesn’t even look old enough to drink.

Pete laughs bitterly. “Rough year,” he says. “Rough timeline.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Never mind. Hey, how do you think you stop a band breaking up?”

The barman shrugs. “Success, probably. I mean all my bands split up because we couldn’t get a record label to listen to our demo.”

“Yeah alright,” says Pete. “Give me another one of these.”

The problem is, well as Pete knows the story of Why Fall Out Boy Are On a Break (needing a rest; needing time for their families; wanting to try new things; getting off the road for a while) his memories of 2009 are so fucked up and spacey and chemically altered that he's almost as ignorant of the real version as the paparazzi are. He knows they were fighting. He knows they were tired. He knows they were touring too much and playing too many shows without days off. But none of that was new. He doesn’t know how they got from those facts being true to the self-inflicted misery of 2011.

(Wow. He didn't know he was going to put it that way).

Pete thanks the barman and settles up, planning to go back to his hotel room and be drunk and feel sorry for himself in peace. On the way his phone rings. The display reads:

_Love of my life calling_

Which he probably thought made a good lyric at some point.

“Patrick?” he asks without thinking.

“No Peter, it’s Ashlee. You know, your fiancé?” she sighs.

“Oh, ha ha, sorry. No I knew it was you. Obviously.”

“Hmm, so is this a good time?”

“Sure,” Pete lies through his teeth. “Good”

“Good,” says, then frankly, “What are you wearing?”

“Uhhhh…..”

“Come on, Pete,” she says. "I haven’t seen your face in a week and I’m so horny I feel like I’m gonna explode. Just humour me, okay? You don’t even have to do anything really if you don't want to. Just talk me through it.”

“Okay,” Pete gulps and gets the door to his hotel room, stumbling inside. There’s a sick feeling in his stomach that he doesn’t know if is alcohol or the distance between them or some weird variety of arousal. He sits down on the edge of the bed. “I’m wearing, uh, black skinny jeans and a leather jacket. The jeans are ripped. Under the jacket I’m wearing a Clan t-shirt – the purple one that says fame whore on it in silver letters.”

Pete doesn’t own a leather jacket. Patrick does though.

“Yeah that’s hot,” Ashlee mutters. Pete can imagine her in his mind’s eye, legs open on the bed they don’t even own yet, probably touching herself with the phone pinned between her chin and shoulder. “Are you alone? You’re in your room right?”

“Yes baby, I’m alone,” Pete says. “I’m taking my pants off, right now.”

“if I was there, I would help you with that,” says Ashlee. “I would – mm – I would get my teeth on the zipper –“

“Yeah?” he says.

“I’d put my mouth on the head of your cock – are you touching yourself? I’m touching myself."

“Yeah,” says Pete, and he is, now, visualizing a ginger-blond head head between his legs, pretending that the dry skin of his own palm is the warm wet heat of a throat.

“I'd go up and down, suck you until you were almost ready,” she goes on: “But then I’d pull off. I’d push you down on the bed-“ he’s already leaning back on the bed, but he doesn’t tell her - “and get on top of you. You like to be topped, don’t you baby? You just love to be pinned down and made to behave.”

“Yes, yes,” he mutters: “I love it.”

“You look so hot under me,” she pants: “We should film it.”

“Yeah,” Pete agrees.

“Tell me about what you’d do to me, Pete.”

“I, uh…” Normally he’s so good at this. Life on the road makes it a necessity. “I’d move you up so I could kiss your throat – and use my other hand to open you up with my fingers. Get you all wet, get you ready."

“I’m ready now,” she gasps. “Do it now." Ashlee comes with his name on her lips.

Pete comes too, and says "Patrick".

 

*

 

Only Pete could go back in time to fix a mistake and end up making more of them. After Ashlee finishes crying, he makes up some bullshit story that Patrick walked in and he said it in surprise, but she didn’t believe him.

“I can’t believe you,” she yells. “You – ARGH! You know people tried to warn me about you, my _parents_ tried to warn me, and I defended you every stop of the way. Are you fucking him, Pete? Are you going behind my back?”

“No!”

“No, of course not. Patrick’s far too honorable for any of that. Someone else then, another guy. _Even my sister could see you were gay_ , Pete. I said you were just metrosexual!”

“Hey, I’m not-“

“You know what, I’m done. I’m tired of being made a fool of. I hope you’ll be very happy together,” and she hangs up. Pete sits on the bed with his phone in one hand for a long moment. then very slowly, very deliberately, stands up and zips his pants. He washes his hands, then his face, and regards his red-eyed reflection with as much disdain as he can muster.

“Nice going, asshole,” he says. He takes a quick shower, trying to scrub off the guilt with the residues of disastrous phone sex, then he calls Mikey Way.

“The good news is, I figured it out,” he says. “The Universe is trying to tell me I’m in love with Patrick.”

“No shit,” Mikey is eating something. “ _I_ could have told you that one. Not to mention your entire fanbase. Hell, the janitors from Warped Tour could probably have told you that one.”

“Yeah but, like, I didn’t think I could do anything about it. I mean, Patrick’s straight. The whole time I’ve known him Patrick’s never given the slightest hint he’d be into dudes. Not that he talks about that stuff much, but dated Anna and this one chick Joe set him up with lasted for like a week. He's not like – asexual or something."

“Okay…” says Mikey. “So…?”

“So this isn’t fair! I’m being exiled through time and space because the Universe wants me to get with a straight dude!”

“To be fair, not so much space,” Mikey points out. “Also I’m not sure the Universe has that degree of conscious will.”

“But Ashlee just broke up with me!” Pete wails.

“Why did Ashlee break up with you?”

“I said Patrick’s name during phone sex.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I gotta say dude, that’s pretty justifiable. Hold on, let me put Gerard on speaker.” There’s some muffled thuds and what sounds like the Way brothers slapping each other, before the speaker crackles to life and Gerard says

“Hey Pete. So you pulled a Ross, huh?”

“It was phone sex, not marriage, Gerard. Oh my God, what about my kid?” Pete says. “Holy shit, I think I preemptively made my kid not exist. I'm the worst dad ever. THE INTERNET WAS RIGHT.”

“Okay,” says Mikey. “Let’s just think about this logically for a second. Pete, you’re one of my best friends in the world but…”

“But what?”

“I mean, were you really ready to have a kid?” Gerard says it for him.

There’s a long pause. Pete’s still a little bit drunk but no so drunk he can’t figure out what they’re getting it.

“You think that was the mistake,” he says quietly. “You think getting Ashlee to break up with me fixed it.”

Silence.

“Fuck you both,” yells Pete. Tears spring to his eyes.

“Sometimes,” Gerard tries for counselling: “things seem unfair, but if we could actually see all the possibilities, we’d realize they were actually for the best.”

“Save it for your sponsor,” Pete snaps, and hangs up. Feeling self-destructive, he gets all the tiny bottles out of the mini bar and drinks them one after another (there are only six, which is probably just as well considering he’s in the mood to drink himself into alcohol poisoning if the means were at hand). Every one tastes disgusting going down – cheapish stuff, but it does the job, and it seems like it takes forever but it can’t be that long because the next thing he knows someone is banging on the room door and Patrick calls,

“Pete? Who were you yelling at just now?”

“Uh.” Pete gathers the wherewithal to sit up and shuffle to the door. Some of the bedclothes come with him. Patrick says,

“Oh my God, how drunk are you?”

“Well…” Pete makes a vague attempt to count.

“I don’t need specifics. I just need to know if you’re going to die in the next few hours.”

“Probably not,” says Pete.

“So who were you arguing with? There’s no-one here.” Patrick looks around like he expects someone to jump out of the cupboard.

“I was on the phone,” Pete says sulkily.

“Ohh….are you and Ashlee fighting again?”

“Ashlee dumped me, Patrick.”

“Oh.”

Pete starts crying.

“Okay,” Patrick sighs and closes the door behind him. “Come here. Jesus, you’re a mess. If I have to burn these clothes you’re replacing them.” But even as he’s saying them, he’s guiding Pete over to the messed up bed and sitting down with him, letting Pete cry on his shoulder like has been literally and metaphorically since they were teenagers living in a van. “It’s alright,” he says awkwardly. “I mean I’m sure it doesn’t feel like it but maybe it was for the best.”

“We were gonna have a kid though.”

“ASHLEE’S PREGNANT?!”

“No! Not yet. I mean in the future we were gonna.”

“Oh. Well I’m sure you’ll find the right person for that Pete. You’ve got plenty of time.”

“I already found him,” Pete accidentally says. He wouldn’t have said it if he wasn’t drunk and emotional. But if he takes it back now, Patrick’s going to think he has a secret boyfriend he’s not telling him about, a secret boyfriend he loves more than Patrick, which is unacceptable: “You,” he clarifies.

Patrick stares at him. Pete is torn between excitement and the profound desire to punch himself in the face.

“Are you saying you want my babies?” Patrick says at last. “Pete, you may be multitalented but I don’t think you can overcome the rules of human biology.”

“I mean we could adopt babies together! Tons of babies. Babies in every color of the rainbow.”

“Yeah okay,” says Patrick. “Why don’t you go take a shower and I’ll clean this stuff up. Can you manage to shower without killing yourself?”

“Patrick,” Pete says, suddenly overcome with the need to make Patrick understand. He takes Patrick’s face in his hands and turns him so that Patrick has to stare at his face. His eyes are wide and very blue. “I love you. I know you’re not happy right now and pretty soon you’re gonna tell me you don’t want to do the band anymore. But I’ve been in love with you since we were teenagers. You’re not just my best friend. You’re the love of my life. Letting you go without telling you will be the worst mistake of my life, and I’ve made some pretty big mistakes.”

Patrick pulls back so that Pete’s hands drop.

“Pete” he says carefully. There’s something panicked behind his eyes, but he’s controlling it.

Pete’s stomach fills with ice.

“Peter, you don’t mean that,” Patrick says. He closes his eyes, pinches his nose like he’s getting a headache.

“Don’t tell me what I mean!” Pete exclaims.

“Let’s just get you cleaned up and try to get some sleep, okay?”

“You don’t love me,” Pete says in horror. All his blood has frozen. Patrick laughs sadly.

“Of course I love you, Pete. Don’t try to guilt me.” He goes into the bathroom and comes back with a wet towel. He wipes Pete’s face and hands like you would a child. Pete sits there like a rag doll. Patrick tugs unbuttons his shirt for him and finds a pair of pyjamas. “Get changed,” he prompts. They’ve been naked in front of each other a hundred times. Pete shrugs out of his clothes and pulls the pyjamas on, completely numb. This is so far from the way he should be undressing. Patrick stays until Pete gets under the covers, gets a glass of water from the bathroom and leaves it on the side table for him. “Don’t take any sleeping pills tonight, okay? You drank too much.” Pete doesn’t say anything but a few tears leak out of his eyes. He turns his face into the pillow and screws his eyes shut.

In the morning Patrick gathers them all in his room, and tells them surprisingly gently that he needs a long break from everything. As of now.

*

“I failed,” Pete says to Mikey and Gerard. He’s sitting in the living room of Mikey’s New Jersey apartment. Gerard has a place in LA now, but he still spends a lot of time in NJ doing band stuff and hanging with his brother. Because in this timeline, Gerard and Mikey remember the 2005 Warped Pete has just lived through, they’re up to date on the whole time-travelling problem. When Pete called Mikey’s phone, Gerard had answered:

“Come to Jersey,” he’d said: “I might have made a breakthrough in the whole time-travel problem.”

“It’s too late, we broke up,” Pete said flatly. “The band, I mean. Also I told Patrick I loved him and he ran like hell. Literally.”

“So you have no reason not to come here,” Gerard had pointed out. “Seriously Pete I think I might have found something. It’s not too late.”

Now the Ways are sitting side by side on Mikey’s battered sofa – he still lives like a college student, albeit one who’s blown their entire scholarship on their sound system and  
record collection – with identical concerned expressions on their faces. Mikey’s fat tortoiseshell cat is lying across his lap, glaring at Pete from the corner of her eye.

“I couldn’t change anything for the better,” Pete says, “I just made it worse. Story of my life, right?”

“You don’t know that,” Mikey tries valiantly: “Butterfly effect, right? You could have set things in motion for…the way it’s supposed to turn out…”

“I don’t care,” Pete puts his head in his hands. “I just want to go back.”

“Actually,” Gerard says, “That’s what I was trying to tell you. I’ve been going through some of Elena’s books, and think I know how to send you back. Uh, forwards. If you’re sure that’s what you want…”

“It’s what I want,” says Pete.

“It could go very wrong,” Gerard warns. “No responsibility accepted for loss of life, limb, dignity et cetera. This is purely an at-your-own risk offer.”

“I have no band,” Pete ticks off on his fingers, “No relationship. And Patrick wants to be as far away from me as possible. Risk accepted.”

“Let’s do it then,” Gerard stands up. “Mikey, get the stuff.”

This time, there’s not just one mirror, but a whole circle of them, which Gerard sets up in the bathroom.

“More reflective surfaces,” he explains. “Plus no fire alarm,” as he lights a stick of incense. Next to the incense burner is a small pile of dandelions, freshly picked and preserved. It does occur to Pete to wonder where they Ways got dandelions at this time of year in the middle of the city, but he thinks better of asking.

“This is a no smoking apartment,” Mikey says. The cat has followed him into the bathroom he pets it absently. It makes Pete miss Hemmy. Presumably Hemmy is at home with his parents right now, as he usually is when Pete’s travelling somewhere he can’t take him.

“Seriously Mikey why don’t you just buy your own place?” Gerard says. “You are literally a rock star now.”

“Cos then I’d be like, responsible for it and have to keep the plumbing working and shit.”

“Reasonable.” Gerard sets the smoking incense on the floor between them and the cat bolts.

“Is that a bad sign?” Pete asks. Gerard doesn’t answer.

“Hold hands,” Gerard instructs them.

“This is starting to feel very Bloody Mary,” Mikey says.

“Shh!” Gerard looks alarmed.

“Please don’t tell me Bloody Mary is real,” Pete says. “Please don’t send me into the mirror to meet Bloody Mary.”

“Now Pete,” says Gerard seriously. “I want you to think very carefully about that night on the roof. What you were thinking and feeling. How you felt. Were you sad? Worried?  
Hopeful? Don’t think in words. Just try to recapture the feeling.”

Pete tries his best to obey Gerard’s instruction. The feeling he recalls best is a kind of wistfulness, and sadness at the separation between him and his band. Him and Patrick. That’s not hard to call up, but its sharper now, fresh and immediate. He was scared about the future and for the sake this exercise, he’s going to have to admit that he doesn’t know if he loves Ashlee. (But then, what is love? He cares about her, after all. Pete knows he loves Patrick, but his feelings for Patrick exist in a category of their own, never to be replicated in any other context or situation. It should be perfectly possible to love multiple people, unless Pete is actually a far worse person than even he’d suspected, and his entire capacity for love has been exhausted by one Patrick Martin Stumph, doomed from the day they met). If he could put a name on the feeling, he’d call it longing. Gerard picks up one of the dandelions, holds it over the incense and says,

“Close your eyes and make a wish. Now blow.”

Then Mikey says,

“I’m really sorry about this Pete,” and punches him in the face.

*

Pete opens his eyes in the future alright. Just the wrong future entirely. The first thing he notices is the overwhelming quiet. The second is that he’s not in the LA house. Or even in LA. He wakes up in a scruffy bedroom with a view from the window he recognises. He’s in Chicago. Not Wilmette, but Northside, close to some of the clubs and bars he associates with his misspent youth. From the state of the apartment, he appears to be reliving said youth, minus the straight edge principles. Empty beer bottles line the windowsill and a cardboard pizza boxes, half full and congealing, on the desk. The furnishing is sparse – is he living some kind of alternative reality here where Fall Out Boy didn’t make it, and Pete’s the struggling writer/bartender/fast food worker/stripper he probably deserves to be? He gets up, grateful at least that the effects of being knocked out haven’t travelled, and looks around. The living room is full of moving boxes. Hemmy is snoring in his dog bed, but when Pete comes in, he jumps up comes over wagging for a fuss.

“Hey buddy,” Pete rubs his head and messes with his ears. Half of Pete’s stuff is unpacked, the rest is still boxed up. There are piles of stuff all over. Pinned to the refrigerator door is a list:

\- Internet  
\- Gas and electric  
\- tell bank  
\- mail redirect

So, he’s just moved in. And apparently in a hurry. He checks his phone and sees a new text from Ashlee:

_The attorneys want a meeting 05/17. Morning preferable. I have the obstetrician in the afternoon.'_

Then he scrolls through his contacts to the P section.

There’s no Patrick. No Trick, or Rickster, or even Lunchbox, which he hasn’t even used in years. So he’s divorced, or divorcing. With no band. And no Patrick.

There is a worst of all possible timelines, and this is it.

If Pete was Scrooge, Patrick would be his Fred and Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim all at once, the Christmas lesson he never learned, the human principle to Pete’s self-centred monstrosity. Except Scrooge learned the lesson in time, and Pete was too dumb to even do that (though in fairness, the Way brothers are decidedly less forthcoming with the facts than Scrooge’s spirits). Pete wanders through the rest of the apartment, getting more depressed and creeped out by the moment, until he locates some clean clothes and his laptop. Then he puts Hemmy on his lead and they head out to locate the nearest Starbucks – if there are two things he needs to begin sorting this mess out, they’re coffee and information. Forty minutes and two double shot mocha frappuccinos later, he’s established some basics to go on.

Fall Out Boy did exist in this universe. They broke up - rumour has it – after an acrimonious fight at the end of the Folie tour. He has to skip most of the stuff about what he and Patrick supposedly said to each other – it’s just LiveJournal gossip anyway. Apparently they haven’t spoken to each other in several months. They’re all engaged with ‘independent projects’ – Joe and Andy have gone back to metal bands, and Patrick is a star, as he should be, with a critically acclaimed album and a solo tour of the U.S. He’s doing far better than he was when Pete made the first wish on the roof in Los Angeles, though he guesses its possible this is the same timeline, just a few months into the future.

And then it hits him.

Maybe he’s done it after all. Maybe he didn’t fail.

_Maybe this is how it’s supposed to be._

Patrick is successful making the music he always wanted to make. He looks so good onstage, so confident, miles and miles from the awkward kid with the killer voice and the penchant for baseball caps. Andy had never been comfortable with the celebrity side of things – metal and political hardcore was where his heart was, and Pete could see perfectly well how he’d be happiest doing that sort of thing forever. Joe – well, Joe was the main songwriter for his new band. The reviews were glowing. Just in case Pete needed it spelling out, there were several comments on how the break from Pete and Patrick’s intense, overpowering writing relationship was bringing out his real talent. Joe had as good as said it.

  
It’s every horrible suspicion he’s always held about himself, that everyone would be better off without him in their lives. That the best thing he could do for Patrick would be to leave him alone – maybe he had a part once, in discovering the kid, but since then he’s been nothing but a burden, holding Patrick back from fulfilling his potential. That he shouldn’t be married to Ashlee – and what does that mean for his potential as a father? Are they divorcing because she believes he’s going to ruin the kid’s life? Would she rather go it alone than let him be a father?

Maybe, in this worst of all possible timelines, Pete has achieved his objective and restored the balance of the universe. Everybody, so it would seem, has gotten what they deserve.

 

*

For the next few days, Pete does very little but be miserable and stalk his ex-friends on the internet. He walks Hemmy and feeds him, but he can’t pretend to enjoy anything and Hemmy keeps whining anxiously, pushing his head into Pete’s hands and trying to get on his lap for reassurance. Pete tries to contact the Ways, but they’re in Europe, touring with My Chem and he gets voicemail for 3 days, then finally Mikey texts him:

_Hey! So sorry, totally crazy schedule. I was going to call u back earlier but G is going thru a bit of a hard time at the moment (still sober!!) and I had 2 b there 4 him. Hope ur well, talk soon xx (G says hi and he hopes u r well)_

_Dnt worry x_ , Pete texts back, and turns his phone off. Then he turns it on again. He still has to meet with the lawyers and shit. Because he’s getting divorced.

Divorce proceedings are a peculiar kind of hell, all polite and formal designed with the acknowledgement of pain and anger seething underneath. Ashlee is eight months pregnant, and still justified in telling Pete he looks like shit. She looks tired, but put together in a matching blouse and slacks with subtle makeup. Pete looks like he slept in his clothes. The lawyers discuss financial arrangements. Apparently the custody arrangements are already settled. Pete guesses it wouldn’t look too good if he asks someone to remind him what they were.

That night he goes out with the intention to get catastrophically drunk. This is starting to feel uncomfortably like a habit, but Pete thinks the circumstances can excuse him. Less excusable is the fistfight. He doesn’t really have a reason for that one.

The evening starts out about as badly as can be expected. Here, Pete has stopped shaving and has straightening his hair. There are bags under his eyes and he looks ten years older than he did in the last timeline. There are still places in Chicago he would be recognised, but he knows how to avoid them. He ends up at the kind of bar that his celebrity persona wouldn’t be seen dead in - cheap beer and sports on the big screen. The clientele are mainly guys in their fifties and sixties dressed in sports sweatshirts and jeans, but there are also a younger crew, tough guy types in wife beaters and combat boots. It smells of cigarettes. Pete drinks steadily for a couple of hours, half-listening to the broadcast and the conversations around him. Then one of the younger guys gets on his soapbox about immigration, starts talking up the new Republican candidate running for governor.

“This Palmer guy, I like him. He’s a straight talker. He’s for the working man and he kicks the illegals out.”

“Uhh, sorry,” Pete snorts into his latest beer. “You mean Damon Palmer? He’s a scumbag. And a racist. Three counts of corruption including a bribe from White supremacists. He should be in prison.”

“Yeah, who asked you, buddy?” Tough guy looks Pete up and down. There are a whole crew of equally tough guys behind him. This is really one of Pete’s worse ideas.

“Well, I live in Chicago,” his mouth says. “And I don’t really like it when idiots like you get criminals into office.”

And afterwards, just to cap off his night, some asshole recognises him as he stumbles out of a taxi. He’s got a black eye and a bad cut down his cheek. His nose might or might not be broken. He hears the click before he recognises the camera for what it is.

“Oh, you gotta be be kidding me,” he says out loud, and turns to confront the guy, but it’s too late. Apparently he’s still famous enough that the trash magazines will buy it,  
because the next day he gets a ton of texts:

 _Dude what’s going on ?!?_ – Gabe

 _Are you okay?_ – Brendon

 _WTF dude are those pics real? Is this a publicity thing?_ – Mikey.

It’s vaguely nice to know he still has friends, even if they’re not his band. Instead of replying to any of them, Pete finds one of his blogs that he still remembers the password for and uploads a bunch of bullshit along with his own photos of his face, because you might as well give the people what they want when things have gone this far. Then he goes back to bed to try and sleep off the hangover. When he next wakes up, there’s a bright sliver of light through the curtains and his phone is ringing. It stops, pauses, then rings again. He reaches out to grab it just in case his kid is literally about to be born, but it’s an unknown number. Normally he’d just shut if off but for some reason he grabs it:

“What?”

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Pete sits bolt upright. Then he groans because Jesus Christ, the headache.

_“Patrick?”_

“No, your mom,” says Patrick crossly. “Though I feel like that sometimes.”

“Your number isn’t in my phone,” says Pete dumbly.

“What? Why not? I just emailed you the new one like two days ago. Are you not checking your email now? What’s wrong with you?”

Twenty minutes later, Pete is out of bed, and Patrick is standing in his doorway looking stressed and pissed off, albeit in a sophisticated and well-dressed sort of way.

“What are you doing here?” asks Pete. “Wait, how do you know where I live now?”

“Pete, what are you talking about? Do you have some kind of head injury? How would I not know where you live? I helped you move in. There was pizza. You broke a desk lamp.”

“Wait.what?” Hurriedly, and as well as his hangover-and-possibly-concussion addled brain will manage, Pete reviews all the information he’s gathered since arriving in this  
timeline. He considers how much of it has been from gossip sites. And LiveJournal.

It is possible – just possible – that Pete has jumped to some unwarranted conclusions.

“So…you don’t hate me in this universe?” he suggests.

“In this – what?” Patrick shakes his head. “You’re my _best friend_ , Pete. In what universe could I possibly hate you?”

“But – we had a fight!”

“Yeah? So? We had a fight. Like every other weekday.”

“But – Fall Out Boy broke up!”

“We...decided to take a break?” Patrick looks uncertain now, like he’s starting to worry Pete has actually gone insane. “Remember? We had that long conversation about how our friendship was more important than the band, and we all needed to do other things for a while?”

“ _You_ all needed to do other things,” Pete says accusatorily. “I never wanted to do anything else.”

Pause.

“Fine,” says Patrick. “We needed to do other things. Now are you gonna let me in or just stand there and bleed on the carpet?”

“I’m not – oh. Oops.” Apparently Pete opened up some of the cuts on his face and hands when he was asleep. “Well, fuck it, it’s not like it can get any uglier.”

And they look at each other - and laugh. Pete knows it isn’t possible for your heart to glow but that is truly what it feels like. Warmth, where his heart is. When Patrick laughs the tie and weight loss and the bleached hair don’t mean anything, he’s Pete’s Patrick again (and maybe that’s absurdly presumptuous of him but hey, Patrick’s the one who came over).

“Come in,” Pete steps back and goes into the kitchen: “I have coffee, probably. Not sure if you wanna risk the milk…”

“Black is fine. Look I’ll do it, seriously, just go clean yourself up a bit, I can’t talk to you like this. Did you even put ice on your eye? Do it now, it’ll be better than nothing.”

Pete goes into the bathroom and tries to clean up a little better than he did the previous night. He even finds some band aids to stick on his knuckles so they don’t open up again. He can’t stop smiling. How he’d felt the previous night seems a million miles away. He goes back into the kitchen gets some of the freshly made coffee for himself. Patrick looks at Pete’s hands:

“Do I want to know?” he asks.

“It was – what you’d expect,” Pete shrugs. “I went out. I got wasted. I mouthed off to some wise guy.”

“Did he recognise you?”

“Nah.”

“Pete you...” Patrick puts his coffee down on the table and rubs his eyes. “I know you still love Ashlee. But you can’t- “

“When did I say I still loved her?” Pete interrupts.

“Uh...the night you told me about the divorce, for one? And then the next day, in the morning. And for most of the afternoon.”

“Okay but,” Pete shakes his head. He reaches across the table and takes Patrick’s hands, holding them in his own. Patrick looks startled. “That was just, you know how I get sometimes. That doesn’t matter. I love _you_ , Trick. I thought I lost you. I thought you hated me. But I still have you and you’re my Cratchits, Patrick. You’re my Tiny Tim.”

Patrick stares at Pete for a long moment. Then:

“What?” he says.

“Okay,” Pete sits down. His heart is beating rapidly. Now he’s started, he’s not going to be able to stop himself - he’d thought he lost Patrick, and now Patrick’s back, and Pete can’t afford to miss any more chances. “There’s something I have to tell you Patrick. I didn’t tell you before because it was still happening but I’m pretty sure it’s over now or at least it soon will be – like, I’m pretty sure this is what I have to do. If I get it right, maybe we’ll even stay here.” Patrick looks around the kitchen in confusion. “Not physically here,” Pete says: “I mean temporally. See, the thing is Patrick, I made a wish, and now I can time travel.”

“You’re still drunk,” Patrick decides. “Go lie on the couch or something. We can talk when you’re sober.”

“I’m not drunk! You have to believe me! Patrick, I can travel through time.”

“Okay Pete,” Patrick says carefully. “I know you don’t like me to ask this, and I’m not trying to be the bad cop, but are you taking your medication?”

“I should explain from the beginning.”

“Yeah, I think you should.”

So he does, and they call the Ways and Gerard is mad that Pete told Patrick, but he backs up his story to tell Patrick and by the end Patrick is highly confused and keeps telling Pete not to use so many metaphors but is prepared to accept that Pete has had some kind of transformative experience, which, Pete tells him, isn’t really the point, the point is that now he knows that

“I love you, Patrick. I know you’re straight, but I’m in love with you anyway and I always have been. The Universe says I have to tell you.”

“I love you too Pete.”

“No I mean – I _love_ you, Patrick. I’m in love with you. That’s the lesson I was sent back in time to learn. I didn’t tell you because I thought you were terminally straight and well, you were with Anna for so long. But it’s not my fault: the Universe wants us to get together, Patrick. The Universe ships us hard.”

Patrick stares at Pete for a long moment. He’s got that deer-caught-in-the-headlines expression Pete recalls from their younger years, when Patrick used to freeze occasionally before a big interview or TV spot. The warm feeling in Pete’s chest turns cold.

“Thank you,” says Patrick in a choked voice. “That’s – really nice.”

Pete’s heart sinks. Oh come _on_ , he thinks desperately. This was so not fair. The Universe wasn’t playing by the rules of its own game. Pete overcome his denial and confessed his love for the fair – Patrick, and Patrick says,

“I should really get to the studio. I just wanted to check you were okay. See you soon.”

“But-….” says Pete.

“You can always call me,” says Patrick, like an apology, and then he’s gathering up his things and putting his jacket on. “And do some grocery shopping, okay? We’ll do something…sometime.” He talks fast, and his movements are rapid, like he can’t get out of there fast enough. Pete is speechless. Patrick pats him on the arm awkwardly as he tries to brush past him. Pete grabs his arm,

“Wait – Patrick – don’t run out on me, okay. I just told you how I’m in love with you, and you said _thank you,_. What does that mean?”

“It means – it means Pete you can’t do this to me,” and Patrick’s face crumples. It’s absolutely the last thing Pete expects and the last thing he’s prepared to deal with. Patrick looks like he’s going to cry - Pete goes to hug him but Patrick pulls away and quickly gets himself under control, schooling his face and running his hands through his hair. “You can’t just – “ he swallows, controls his voice, “You can’t just tell me something like that and then…”

“And then what?” Pete tries to make his voice gentle. He sites on the other side of the table, across from Patrick, and refrains from trying to touch him.

“Well no offense Pete,” Patrick laughs a little too sharply, “But your track record for falling in love with people doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.” At once he backtracks: “It’s not that I don’t care about you. Obviously. I care about you more than almost anyone else in the world. And it’s not that I’m – what did you call it - _terminally straight_ either.”

“Wait, what?” Pete exclaims. “You’ve been with dudes?”

“No. I just. I don’t have any experience. But like, I’m not saying it could never - be a possibility. I’ve – I’ve thought about it before. On occasion.”

“Great, that’s great, awesome,” Pete nods frantically. “So that’s perfect then. We should get married. We are the Universe’s OTP.”

“I - ...don’t know what that word means,” says Patrick. “But – Pete – your friendship is so, so important to me. I know you feel like you’re in love with me now-“

“I’ve always been in love with you!”

“- But it wasn’t that long ago that you were totally in love with Ashlee, the same Ashlee, we should note, to whom you are still technically married. You have to admit that you fall in and out of love very fast, and I know you know that, because you’ve talked about it in therapy. And you aren’t on good terms with any of your exes.”

“Well, yes! Because all of those people weren’t my soul mate! We weren’t meant to be. _You’re_ my soul mate!”

“That’s how you feel now. But you’re in the middle of a divorce, you’ve got the whole custody thing going on- “

“But when that’s all done-… “. Pete knows he sounds pathetic. It’s hardly the first time he’s been pathetic in front of Patrick.

“When that’s all done, you might feel completely different. Or you might feel completely different in a few weeks anyway. I’m sorry Pete, but I can’t-“the calm façade wavers.

  
“That’s just not a road I can go down. Like I said, you mean too much to me.”

“Are you saying you don’t want to mess up our friendship?” Pete asks quietly. It’s just a cliché line. Such a copout.

“Only because,” stresses Patrick. “Our friendship is too important to risk.”

“But you love me.”

“Yes.”

“But you won’t let us be in love.”

“Pete,” Patrick presses the bridge of his nose like he’s getting a headache. “You can’t manipulate people into dating you. That’s not how it works.”

Maybe it’s because he’s been called manipulative too many times in his life, but that makes Pete angry. He doesn’t mean to manipulate anyone, he’s just honest about what he feels and people take it the wrong way.

“Maybe you should go then,” he snaps. “Wouldn’t want to keep the _studio_ waiting.”

“Pete, that’s not fair.”

Pete shrugs. “Guess that’s what you get when you hang out with manipulative people like me.”  
Patrick sighs and fixes his hat on his head. “I’ll talk to you later, when you’ve calmed down.”

“Don’t do me any favors.”

Patrick looks like he’s about to say something else, but thinks better of it. He picks up his bag and heads for the door.

“Bye Pete,” he says in his reasonable, I’m-the-sane-one voice. Pete says

“Bye.”

He doesn’t hear from Patrick again that day. Or the next day. Or the next.

*

There’s another divorce mediation, and Pete tries his best to pay attention this time, at least to what his own lawyer tells him. He’s distracted by how pregnant Ashlee looks – not that she didn’t look pregnant before, obviously, but in the last week she has grown exponentially. She’s now past the point at which anyone can look glamorous, huge belly awkward on her small frame, and Pete fights off the impulse to offer his arm or pull out a chair for her. Her lawyer does it for her anyway. He keeps watching her belly the whole time, half expecting to see a hand or foot push at the surface - it looks like some Alien-type shit’s going on in there, so he’s not too surprised when she calls him at 2am the next morning saying through gritted teeth:

“Get your ass to Mercy, Peter, your son’s on his way. Ohhhh fuck. Fuck. I hate men. Get down here.”

  
Pete nods, realises she can’t see him, and says, “I’ll be right there.” Then instead of leaving he just sits on the end of his bed freaking out for several minutes. He doesn’t want to go on his own. He doesn’t want to face what was going to be his family. But Joe and Andy are in New York with their respective bands and the Ways are still in Europe. He thinks about Gabe, but Ashlee hates Gabe, and would probably punch him in the face for that. He briefly wonders if he could bring his lawyer.

He pulls up at Mercy Hospital in record time, mentally accepts the parking fine, and runs for the emergency entrance. His heart is beating like crazy. He gives his and Ashlee’s names to the annoyingly calm receptionist who looks up something on her computer and says,

“Room 204 on the second floor, you can go on up.”

“Thanks.”

“And Mr. Wentz?” she smiles, “You can slow down. There’s a while to go yet.”

“I hate you,” is the first thing Ashlee says to him when he goes up. She’s sitting up in bed looking terrified, pained and sweaty, but there’s no indication that she’ll be giving birth in the next several minutes.

“You asked me to be here,” Pete points out.

“I’ve changed my mind. Fuck off.”

Pete holds up his hands and makes to leave again, but then Ashlee says:

“No! Actually. Stay here.”

“Story of my life,” he says, and Ashlee gives him a look that could melt steel but then grabs his hand, breathing out hard. She looks him directly in the eye and says

“Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III, don’t you dare let this child down.”

It’s a realistic concern, Pete’s the first to admit, but he can’t help thinking she was unnecessarily blunt about it.  
Ashlee’s contractions ease off and a nurse comes in and checks her progress. She says they should try and get comfortable because it could be several hours or even the next day at the rate labor is progressing.

“I thought you wanted to stay home until the last minute?” he says.

“I thought this was the last minute!” Ashlee yells. “Shockingly, I’ve never had a baby before! Oh my God. Get out of my face. Don’t go far though. Just go and. Get a coffee or something. Amuse yourself.”

Pete does go and gets a coffee, but decides not to drink it – if he gets any more adrenaline going he might actually die, which would definitely count as letting the baby down. Instead he calls Patrick. He doesn’t mean to. It’s just that he opens his phone and Patrick’s is the most recently dialled number. Then he remembers that they’re fighting and immediately hangs up. Ten minutes later Patrick calls back,

“What’s up?” There’s the sound of traffic behind him.

“My kid is gonna be born,” Pete says. “Like, imminently.”

“Oh shit!”

“Not like in five minutes,” Pete assures him. “I made that mistake too. But today. Or tomorrow maybe.”

“Where are – are you at the hospital?”

“Yeah. Mercy.”

“Do you want – do you want me to come wait with you? Or I mean would Ashlee mind?”

“Probably not. She likes you. Way more than she likes me.”

It’s the truth. Ashlee had always been extremely fond of Patrick, which is probably one of the reasons Pete married her. I addition to displaying good taste and sound judgement of character, she understood that Pete needed him, how he balanced Pete in a way no-one else could. Unlike some of Pete’s partners, she’d never been dismissive of Patrick, or jealous of their friendship.

“Alright I’ll – it’ll be about an hour, okay?”

“Take your time,” Pete says, though what he wants to say is no, get here now, screw all sense of practically and the logistics of actually getting across the city, I travelled through time to be with you, the least you can do is teleport so we can be together when my child is born, I can’t do this without you’.

Patrick makes it in forty-four minutes and thirteen seconds.

“Sorry,” Patrick says: “There was traffic.” He’s wearing the fedora and a tailored coat. Pete’s wearing sweatpants and an ancient Cubs tee with a stain on the sleeve. Patrick sits down next to him and asks,

“How’s Ashlee doing?”

“Good I guess. As good as, you know, can be expected. She keeps asking for me but telling me to go away again.”

“Well, I expect you’re not the only one who’s confused and scared, Pete.”

“You’re right,” Pete slumps forward and covers his face with hands. “Uggghh, I am such a selfish fuck.”

Patrick doesn’t confirm or deny that, just puts a hand Pete’s back and pats him lightly. “Did they give any more of a time frame or…?”

“Not really. Just said it will be a while yet.”

“Okay…how about we call your parents?”

Once Pete’s family is up to date, they wander back and forth from the waiting room to the maternity ward for a couple of hours. Ashlee is glad to see Patrick, or ‘someone sane’, as she puts him, though she warns him that:

“Things are about to start getting progressively grosser. Anytime you want to leave I won’t hold it against you.”

Patrick just smiles and asks if there’s anything she needs, anybody she’d like him to call. Basically all the things Pete should have done.

“My parents are on their way,” she says, “And I guess you called Pete’s? I think we’ll leave it at that for no – OW! That was closer together. They’re getting closer together, what do I do?”

“I’ll call the nurse,” says Patrick calmly. Said nurse decides that it’s time to move Ashlee to the delivery suite, and looks between Pete and Patrick hesitantly:

“I’m the father,” Pete offers.

“And is dad going to be the birthing partner?”

“I guess,” says Ashlee.

“Honey this is your delivery –“ the nurse starts but Ashlee cuts her off:

“No it’s fine, it’s his child too. Ohhh God. I think we should go, can we go?”

“The porters are just on their way, honey,” says the nurse, then her pager beeps, but it’s okay because at that moment two porters plus one of the senior nurses arrive, and they take Ashlee up to delivery. She’s doing amazing, it hits Pete suddenly, and he resolves to stop being so useless. Patrick squeezes his hand as he goes to follow the porters:

‘You’ll do great,’ he mouths and Pete smiles at him. Item number 57098 for the list of why Pete loves Patrick forever.

 

*

 

He’s so tiny. Pete hasn’t seen many newborns since he himself was a child, but he’s sure his son must be particularly little. A full human, in miniature, complete but kind of unfinished-looking: hours from birth, he resembles less a person than a tiny, fuzzy, wrinkled monkey. They call him Bronx Mowgli – Pete has no time for insincere pretenses of normalness. Bronx is the most incredible thing Pete has ever seen, touched or heard. He can scream at a volume out of all proportion looking to his size. He’s born jaundiced. First Ashlee and then Pete get to hold the baby briefly, before he’s whisked away to be put in an incubator. The nurse says it’s not too serious –it’s quite common in newborns, he needs is a few days of therapy and he’ll be just fine. She’s referring to phototherapy – Bronx is to be placed under a special light-box - but phrase still makes him laugh a little hysterically. God, he hopes a few days of therapy will be all the poor kid needs. Ashlee gets emotional when Bronx is taken away, her voice cracks as she asks if he won’t need feeding –

“You can feed him in the neonatal ward when you’re discharged, honey,” says the nurse. “He’s in good hands. Why don’t you get some sleep while you can?”

Ashlee looks disbelieving, but sure enough, her eyelids flutter and she begins to nod off. The birth went fast, but she kept on bleeding afterwards and has to stay in bed while they give her the drugs to stop it. As a lifelong insomniac, Pete’s had a lot of practice in watching people sleep. Every so often, Ashlee dreams something that makes her jump half-awake, look around startled before realizing where she is and starts falling asleep again. It’s very revealing. Right now, Ashlee looks very young. He feels a rush of – something towards her. Affection, probably, with a side of admiration for what she’s just accomplished. Shortly after, her family arrive, and the hospital have to deploy some security guard to keep out the paparazzi that are following them. Pete makes himself scarce. Ashlee’s parents have never liked him, and now that the divorce is in motion they have evidence that they were right all along. He decides to leave them to their customary session of cooing over baby stuff and insulting him.

“Pete,” says Ashlee as he heads for the door.

“Yeah?” he half-turns around.

“Thank you,” she says. “I know I yelled at you earlier, and I’m s- well, not particularly sorry, you deserved it. But even so. Thanks for being there when I needed it.”

He looks back at her, propped up on pillows and smiling, surrounded by her family.

“No problem,” he says. “Happy to fill in until the cavalry arrives.” He does a little salute.

“I meant it when I said I want us to remain friends. I won’t obstruct your access to him. You’ll be a good dad, Pete.”

And maybe labor hormones are catching or something, because his heart fills and hot tears spring at the corner of his eyes.

“Thanks,” he barely manages to choke out, and makes a run for it. Back in the waiting area, Patrick is waiting with a cake, balloons, Joe and Andy and a small selection of Pete’s closest friends. Then he really does start crying.

“Pete?” Patrick asks worriedly, like he’s afraid he’s got it all wrong.

“Patrick,” says Pete. “You’re the best.”

Patrick blushes. Pete hugs him and all their friends cheer, then Joe and Andy come and join in the hug -how could Pete have imagined they’d abandoned him? He’s insane.

“Congrats, dude,” Travie punches him in the shoulder and practically bends in half to hug him.

“I’m so proud,” Gabe sniffs and pretends to wipe away a tear. “My son is father.”

“Can we see him?” Greta is practically vibrating with excitement. “What does he weigh? Who does he look like?”

“Not right now.” Pete explains about the jaundice and the light-box. Greta says

“Awww, poor baby….my niece the same thing when she was born. Does he have a name yet?”

“It’s Bronx,” says Pete.

There’s an even split of enthusiasm and slightly pained looks.

“Ashlee likes it,” Pete defends.

“Hell yeah dude, that’s an awesome name!” Gabe exclaims. “He is totally gonna be a rock star.”

The doctors want to keep Ashlee in for a couple of days, just as a precaution because of the bleeding. Naturally, she has comprehensive five star insurance courtesy of Papa Joe, so it’s not a problem. Pete spends hours at the observation window in neonatal, staring in fascination at his son. He looks like Ashlee, as much as a baby can look like an adult – he’s got that generic baby-nose and a little rosebud mouth, but his eyes are the same shape and when the puffiness subsides, the Simpson facial structure emerges. He’s so active, squirming and clenching his tiny fists. Sometimes the nurses take him up to Ashlee to feed, but when she’s sleeping, Pete gives him formula from a bottle. That’s their first fight:

“You should have woken me!” Ashlee accuses. “I don’t want him on formula!”

“The nurse said you should sleep!” Pete objects. “It’s baby formula, not Coke!”

Ashlee bursts into tears and calls him an asshole, and Pete has to spend twenty minutes apologizing and assuring her that he would not, under any circumstances, feed the baby Coca Cola.

In the morning the consultant approaches Pete: “Mr. Wentz,” she says. “I’m pleased to say your son’s bilirubin levels have normalized. You’ll be able to take him home today.” Before Pete can panic she goes on: “We would, however, prefer to keep your wife in for at least a few more days. You can take Bronx in to visit her whenever you’re ready.”

“Wait so,” Pete shakes his head “- - you’re sending Bronx home? Like – _with me_?”

The consultant gives him an odd look. “I do have you on record as the father. Visiting hours on the antenatal are relaxed, you can stay with your wife most of the time.”

“Yes! You have. I mean, I am. It’s - nothing.” He bites his tongue before he can say anything to jeopardize this.

“Wonderful. If you’d like to head on down to reception, they have some forms for you to fill out.” Pete nods several times and takes off down the corridor. He’s taking his son home.

 

*

 

“Hey congrats!” Mikey Way has left him a message. “We heard the news, that’s awesome. Call me back because I have to tell you something.”

Pete does mean to call him. Its just that this whole baby thing is kind of all-consuming. He had always assumed he’d be fine with the no-sleep part of looking after a newborn. After all he was used it. But it turns out that baby-induced sleeplessness is a whole different ballgame to regular old insomnia. With insomnia, he can lie on his bunk with Earth Crisis or Yellowcard pumping into his eardrums, or head out to find some nightlife to counter the loneliness. When you have a baby, you have to stay in the house with the baby and try to make the baby sleep, and the baby cries, and you have to try to feed it. It was his second night with Bronx at home – he’d brought him into see Ashlee during the days and they both stared at their baby, counting his little toes and exclaiming over his tufts of hair and forgetting to argue with each other. But when Pete has to take him home for the night and the baby does not sleep. At all, apparently. Pete feels vaguely guilty that he might have messed the kid up already – screwed by genetic heritage before he was even born – but that soon gives way to ‘Oh God please stop crying, why are you crying I don’t know what you want’. He resorts to just walking around kind of jiggling the baby in the hope it will relax him, but if anything Bronx cries louder. Pete kind of feels like crying himself. If it were a more reasonable hour, he’d call his parents – they did this three times, and one of those was with him, so they must be essentially experts. However, it’s after midnight.

So he calls Patrick.

Oh it’s not that bad. Patrick never goes to sleep before 2am anyway. Okay, it’s pretty bad. Patrick was there at the hospital and did all the right things, but that was practical stuff. There was an order of tasks to be accomplished, and the situation was highly unusual. They haven’t really _talked_ since Patrick almost said he loved Pete but then told him they could never be together. It’s all up in the air with that.

“Patrick help, I can’t parent,” Pete says.

“Uhh – and you think I can?” Patrick asks. “At least you had younger siblings.”

“But you always take care of me, and Joe when he’s stoned, and the Panic kids…please come over, I know you’re not asleep and you know how to do things.”

Picking up on the whining tone in Pete’s voice, Bronx cries louder.

“Alright,” Patrick sighs. “I’ll be there in twenty. I can see I’m gonna have to get used to this.”

“Yes,” Pete says, and hangs up. And wouldn’t you know it, the exact moment Patrick takes the baby from him, Bronx stops crying.

“See!” Pete says, then lowers his voice in case he starts Bronx off again: “I knew you could do it. You’re magic, Patrick.”

Patrick rolls his eyes. “Let’s try putting him in his crib.” He pauses. “Pete, where’s the crib?”

“I thought he’d be going home with Ashlee, I didn’t plan on having visitation this soon.”

Patrick sighs again. “Tomorrow we’re going shopping. Do you have pillows? And like, a basket or something?”

They end up putting the baby down in a cardboard box, lined with a fleece blanket. It was that or Hemmy’s old dog bed, but Pete didn’t want to make Hemmy jealous and Patrick said he thought that was possibly illegal. Bronx wakes up as they settle him and starts fussing:

“Sing,” says Pete.

Patrick looks uncomfortable.

“Come on, it works on me, it should work on him too.”

And it does.

By the time they get Bronx settled its past even Patrick’s bedtime, and in any case, if he leaves now Pete and Bronx will probably both cry.

“Come to bed with me,” Pete says. Patrick’s eyebrows go up.

“Just to sleep,” Pete says quickly. “It’s just – the couch isn’t comfortable, and there’s room – it will be just like on tour.”

“Only if you’re actually going to sleep,” says Patrick, “And only if you’re quiet.”

“Cross my heart,” says Pete.

 

*

 

Ashlee gets discharged the next morning. As Pete is going in to bring her Bronx in any case, he offers them a ride back to her house afterwards. While he’s driving in to Mercy, his phone rings. Normally he’d just answer in, but he’s a parent now, so. He means to check it when he’s parked, but then Bronx starts fussing and only stops when Pete gives him to Ashlee. As he watches her in the passenger seat, Bronx asleep in her arms, he feels a surprising rush of – regret? Maybe. Not regret they’re divorcing, exactly, but a kind of – wistfulness, perhaps, that their happy little family life wasn’t to be. Ashlee is staring at Bronx like she’d transfixed, a vague smile on her lips (though to be fair, some of that could be the after effects of the drugs).

“Thanks Pete,” she says, when he pulls up in the drive of the impressive house. Ashlee is getting the house in the settlement, which was fair enough, seeing as he travelled so much and in any case, she paid most for it. He gets her case out of the car and takes it up to the door for her. “Do you, um, want to come in?” she asks.

“No,” he says. “No that’s…”

She leans in, like she’s going to kiss him on the cheek, then stops and thinks better of it. She says, “I’ll see you next Monday then. At the mediation. Or if you want to see him...you can call me.”

“…Okay.”

“Pete,” she hesitates. “I just want you know – I don’t blame you. Not really. I said some things I shouldn’t have when I was angry. We both made mistakes. We were young and rushed into it.”

“I don’t blame you either,” he says, goes back to his shitty flat and sits on the couch for forty-five minutes staring at the blank television screen. He remembers the missed call from earlier and picks up his phone, but just as he’s about to investigate he gets a text from Patrick:

_Meet me outside IKEA in an hour. I know you don’t have plans._

Pete texts back:

_IKEA???_

Patrick answers:

_Baby things! This is not optional!_

_Ur a good dad, Pattycakes. Maybe this kid will turn out okay after all. :p_

Patrick sends him back an eye-roll.

Eighty minutes later (Pete stopped to get Starbucks but he brought real coffee for Patrick too so it’s okay) they’re both standing in the entrance to the baby section of the nearest IKEA. Pete is no better enlightened:

“I don’t even know what half of this stuff is,” he complains. “Infant sleep positioner? Antibacterial baby wipe warming pad? Diaper stacker?”

“Oh honey,” laughs an older woman who’s eavesdropping on them. “You don’t need half of that stuff. It wasn’t even around when mine were small.”

“I know right,” Pete exclaims. “Patrick just wants to buy baby things.”

Patrick blushes. “Pete, the baby doesn’t even have a crib yet.”

“Well yes, you will be one of those,” the woman smiles. “So when are you two adopting? Is it all arranged?”

There’s a split second for that to compute, then they both start talking at once:

“Oh we’re not-“

“He’s not – we’re -“

“It’s his baby,” Patrick says.

“Oh you’re the biological father?” The woman asks Pete. “Well I’m sure he’ll be a very handsome boy then,” and winks at Patrick.

Ordinarily, this would be golden to Pete, embarrassing Patrick being one of his favourite pastimes. He’d string it out for all it was worth. Now it just opens up a hole of something he can only describe as longing, saturated with the memories from the past night and the last decade: of Patrick holding Bronx, singing to him, of going to bed with Patrick and waking up with him, being onstage with him, arguing with him, making up with him. This timeline is dangling it in his face.

“We’re just friends,” Pete blurts finally, and the woman is taken aback.

“Oh! Oh I’m sorry, it’s just I thought – seeing you together -”

“It’s okay, it’s happened before,” says Patrick.

“All you really need is clothes, somewhere for the baby to sleep, food and plenty of diapers when they’re tiny,” says the woman. “Unless you’re doing  
cloth. Are you doing cloth or disposable?”

“Disposable,” says Pete quickly. Andy will probably harass him about it, and he’s sure its ethically preferable to go cloth, but Pete has his limits. In the  
end, they get all of the above plus several toys and teddies and a mobile, a music box and a baby monitor.

“Look,” Patrick grins and picks up a toy keyboard with brightly colored notes. He plays a few: “It’s pretty sound.”

“I think you have enough keyboards, Trick,” Pete teases him.

“For _Bronx_ ” Patrick rolls his eyes. “I mean when he’s older. Or look, he could start with –“ he picks up a painted drumset, the gets distracted by the xylophones. Pete watches him, the warm glow in his chest he always feels like he watches Patrick with music, and he thinks about what the woman thought and how much he wishes it were true, him and Patrick touring the world together then coming home to Bronx – home being Chicago, obviously, Patrick wouldn’t be Patrick if he could live in LA for good – they’d get a house in the suburbs with a garden and a dog – Pete is blinded by how fiercely he wants that life.

But of course it’s not about what he wants.

Thanks for the memories, magic wishing star.

 

*

 

Gerard Way texts him: _Congrats :D. You know you’ve been papped w/him already right? He’s cute. Call me asap may have some info_. Pete texts him  _Ty 4 heads up_ and means to call that night but he’s exhausted and falls asleep early and actually sleeps right through till the morning for once. Then he forgets again.

Three days later, Pete has Bronx for the weekend. Friday night to the middle of Saturday, he just sits in his apartment staring at the baby, feeds him expressed milk and keeps him somewhat clean. He carries Bronx around, show him household items – Bronx can focus on them now, screwing up his face and grunting – sometimes he seems to be smiling, but Google says that’s just wind. Pete’s aware that he’s supposed to feel overwhelming love for his child. At present he primarily feels fear, and a weight of profound responsibility.

Patrick comes over at 6, bringing takeout because he correctly predicted Pete wouldn’t get to the store.

“You’re a genius,” Pete says and takes the containers off him: “Oh my God, you went to that Thai place. You remember the place. I love you.”

“Where’s the little guy?” Patrick asks, and on cue Bronx starts crying. They change him, feed him, rock him, but nothing will do –

“Is he sick?” Pete asks in desperation. “Should we call Ash?”

“He just wants to sleep,” Patrick says: “But he’s all whipped up. Here, put him –“ he arranges Bronx against Pete’s shoulder, warm and shockingly solid, and Pete walks him up and down until his scrunched red face starts to relax. His sobs calm into hiccups. When the hiccups give way to rhythmic, wet baby breaths, Pete goes to lower him carefully, carefully, into the crib they picked out, then unbending ever so carefully in case he starts again –

\- and sees Patrick is staring at him from the couch with strange look on his face.

“What?” Pete says.

“Just,” Patrick shakes his head, a little wonderingly. “You’re really good with him, you know?”

“Are you kidding,” Pete snorts, just catching himself before he gets too loud. “If it wasn’t for you he wouldn’t even have a bed. We’d probably both just be laying on the floor crying.”

“Don’t exaggerate,” Patrick rolls his eyes. There’s a quirk of a smile around his mouth. Pete goes to sit next to him and lean on him but Patrick pushes him back a little so they can talk properly: “You may not have all the practical stuff figured out yet, but you’re still really good with him. You’re a natural.”

“Natural disaster, more like.”

Then Patrick does laugh, and they’re sitting so close, like they have any number of times in the past but suddenly, something is different. It’s the shared experience of looking after the baby, or its the particular softness with which Patrick observes Pete with Bronx, or the way the light catches in Patrick’s eyes and a hundred misconceptions over the years, from ’I can’t be in love with you’ to ‘I just assumed you two were’ –

“This is it, you know,” Pete says, almost conversationally. “You and he are as real as I’ve ever felt.”

Patrick’s eyes widen fractionally. “I can’t– I can’t….,” he whispers. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.” There are faint gold sparks in the blue green of  
his irises. Pete has known this for years. “I’ve never – I don’t know what’s happening to me, Pete. I think I’m scared. Aren’t you scared?”

“Not with you,” Pete says. “Not in this world or any other.”

And they lean in, and their lips touch, Pete gasps and his eyes close -

\- thunder cracks, lightning sparks behind his eyelids –

\- and he wakes, on the roof at dawn.

 

*

 

“What the hell – heck are you doing up here!?”

Ashlee is balanced half in and half-out of the skylight door. She’s trying to cut down on swearing before the baby comes. Hemmy is running back and  
forth between them and barking, huffing in discontent. Pete realizes he’s lying on his back, staring at the pale sky.

“Pete? Are you okay?” Ashlee asks carefully.

“Yes,” he sits up, and takes a dead leaf out of his hair.

“Did you fall asleep out here? Why didn’t you come to bed?”

“I guess I must have,” Pete says. His mind is racing. It was a dream. It must have been a dream, but it felt so real. He was getting divorced. He’d seen  
and held his son. They’d put Bronx to bed then he and Patrick collapsed on the couch. They were talking. They were leaning in. He was kissing Patrick.

Oh.

But – mission not accomplished! What’s the point in all that time travelling just to learn a lesson, when the instant he gets the chance to apply said  
lesson he’s back here, like none of it ever happened! It’s not right! It’s not _fair!_. ‘Life’s not fair, Pete’, he hears his dad say inside his head. In this timeline or any other.

And he still has his son to consider.

Pete remembers then, about the phone calls he never returned from the Way brothers. Apparently in that future or this one he’s still just as much of an idiot. Possibly the responsible thing to do would be to tell Ashlee how he feels – that he loves her, but he’s not in love with her, that they shouldn’t be married but he will do everything he can to support her and the child and the house is hers if she wants it. That’s probably what a responsible sort of adult human would do.

Pete has a child on the way and is close to thirty years old in this timeline. It’s time he became a responsible sort of adult human.  
Just maybe, after breakfast.

 

*

 

In the event, it of course doesn’t go that smoothly.

“We need to talk,” he tells Ashlee.

“Okay,” she says.

They’ll tell the press there are no hard feelings. That’s crap. There are plenty of hard feelings. They’re getting divorced.

“I was stupid to believe I was the most important person in your life,” says Ashlee, “But you let me believe it, because it was convenient. You hurt me.  
You embarrassed me.”

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“I know you’re sorry. That doesn’t make it okay.”

“I know.”

“Did you know people warned me about you? Even my sister warned me.” She looks down at her bump, suddenly so much more real to Pete as the first home of his child.

“I’m not surprised,” he says. Her eyes fill, but she blinks her tears back. When she speaks her voice is wobbly.

“I’m not moving while I’m pregnant. I’m keeping the house. You can have the dog.”

“He’s my dog,” Pete points out, and she rolls her eyes, tearing up again. She does smile when he promises to do everything to support the child.

“I know you will,” she says. “Despite everything, I still think – you’ll be a good dad, Pete. You do some incredibly stupid things, but I know you’ll take care of your child.”

Pete wishes he could be as sure.

Whilst he’s being brave, he calls Mikey Way. He’s not sure what he’s hoping for, given that whatever Mikey discovered was either in this future or another timeline altogether, but now Mikey remembers time-travelling Pete:

“It started on Warped Tour, right?”

“Yes!” exclaims Pete in relief. “And, Mikey, it’s over. I’m back to where I started. And all I know is I love Patrick but Patrick doesn’t love me. And I’m getting a divorce, and I have no band. So in a way, I’m worse off than I ever was!”

“You’re – wait, what? Okay first, Patrick loves you. Secondly, how did you get back?”

“We kissed,” Pete says. “Me and Patrick. We are the Universe’s OTP.”

“Ohhh,” says Mikey: “Oh.”

“What?” Pete demands.

“Well, since all this crazy stuff happened to you, I’ve been doing some research. A spell broken with a kiss isn’t an accident, Pete. Someone did it.”

“You said I wished it into existence!”

“Not exactly. This is a very particular spell, quite hard to get right. Your subconscious wish activated it, because the caster wouldn’t have it operate against your will. If you look at the situations who’ve been through…it’s pretty easy to traceback the spell, Pete. Only one person could have cast it.”

“You’re not saying…” Pete frowns in confusion.

“Yeah,” says Mikey.

There’s a pause. Pete’s chest tightens up.

Then:

“No,” says Pete, shaking his head. His heart is pounding. “That’s impossible. Patrick doesn’t want me. We’ve had that fight. He said he didn’t want to jeopardize our friendship.” He wants to roll his eyes just saying the stupid phrase.

“Remember what we talked about, Pete: it might not have been consciously wished for. Look, I ’ve got to go, but why don’t you pay Patrick a visit? You’re not the only one who took the band’s breakup hard you know.”

“But – but – Patrick doesn’t know how to do magic! He doesn’t even believe in it!” Of all the crazy ideas chasing each other around inside Pete’s head, this is the one that stands out for immediate comment. “Also he’s doing great, he’s got his record and his tour and everything…”

“Go and visit him,” Mikey repeats, then hangs up. Pete stares at the phone for a long moment, then puts his hand on Hemmingway’s head.

“Hem, I envy you your uncomplicated life,” he says. Hemingway wiggles his stub of a tail and shakes his head, flinging drool.

 

*

 

Pete puts off visiting Patrick for three days.

Then Patrick posts the most out-of-character confession on his blog Pete could possible imagine.

So much for doing great.

Pete checks the address on his phone again, and looks up at the towering apartment building. According to Gabe, Patrick downsized and bought a studio apartment here while he was working on his album, because he needed the money for production costs. He has Hemmy on the lead partly for moral support and partly for Trojan horse purposes – Patrick has a real soft spot for Hemmy, so even if he doesn’t want to see Pete, he probably won’t just tell them to piss off. Pete is worried. He is also, maybe, angry. If Mikey’s right, Patrick did something to him he didn’t have any right to do, and that’s so entirely unlike Patrick Pete can hardly believe it. But then, the blog post was utterly unlike Patrick too. So here we are.

Because Patrick underestimates how famous they’ve become, he just uses his real name on the door list. Pete leans on the buzzer until Patrick unlocks the door (he knows he’s in. He can see Patrick’s little ecologically friendly car parked around the back).

“Okay come up,” says Patrick tiredly.

“It’s me,” says Pete into the intercom.

“I know it’s you dumbass, I can see you on the CCTV.”

Pete looks up but he can’t see the cameras so he just opens the door. The building is way less nice than he expected. Not that Patrick has ever been one for luxuries, but this is just – sparse.

“Not what you’re used to these days, huh?”

Pete turns around. Patrick comes down the steps to meet him.

“You can say that again,” Pete says before he can stop himself. He doesn’t just mean the building. The Patrick he is confronting bares only the faintest resemblance to his best friend. He’s very slim, and blonde, and sharp-featured, dressed in a cardigan over a buttoned shirt. His expression is different. More guarded. Pete always thought he knew his Patrick inside out. At least he still smiles, just a little, at Pete’s inappropriateness, and leans down to pet Hemingway. Hemmy goes nuts, wagging his stump tail and jumping up – Pete tries to pull him back because he’ll mess up Patrick’s new smart clothes, but the truth is Hemmy’s been stronger than Pete since he grew out of puppyhood. Patrick doesn’t seem to mind.

“If you’re here about the blog post, you can relax,” Patrick says. “It was stupid. I’ve taken it down now.”

Pete wants to remind him that the internet doesn’t really work like that, but maybe another time.

“That’s not why I’m here,” Pete says. “I mean, maybe that prompted me. But…”

“What?” says Patrick.

“Patrick, are you in love with me?” Pete asks.

Patrick stares at him for a long moment. Then: “Wow. Wow Pete. I haven’t talked to you in six months, and that’s what you came to ask. You’re even more self-absorbed than you used to be.”

“Patrick, wait!” Pete says as Patrick turns to go back up the stairs. He has this weird feeling like if he doesn’t do this now, it’s not going to get done. “I know about the spell, okay?”

Patrick freezes.

And that’s how Pete knows.

Patrick’s a crappy liar, but he’ll give it a go when he feels cornered, and apparently he feels cornered now:

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says. “Spell?”

“Magic,” Pete says.

“Come off it Pete,” Patrick rolls his eyes. “There’s no such thing.”

“I didn’t think so, and I know you didn’t used to think so, but you’re the only person who could have done this. I read your blog post. You were messed up. What, you thought you’d just give it a try? Nothing to lose now, huh?” And now Pete is angry. He’s been sent back through time, seen the future, gotten divorced, met his kid, woken up in the present again and begun the process of dissolving his marriage. When all along Patrick could have just _talked_ to him. Patrick freezes. Then:

“You’d better come upstairs,” he says quietly. Pete follows in silence, eyes roaming over the staircase and walls. It reminds him of the youth hostels they stayed in back when Fall Out Boy was a van band: bare. Clean. Hemmy bounds up the stairs between them, keeping the tension from becoming too unbearable. He gets distracted in the hallway and Pete has to wrangle him towards the apartment Patrick points out. It looks just the same as all the rest of them. Inside its functional. There’s a full-size Yamaha keyboard against the back wall and a single guitar, not one of Patrick’s favourites.

The window looks out onto another apartment building.

“My stuff is at the studio,” Patrick says, a little defensively. “I’ve been working there.”

“Do you sleep in here?” Uninvited, Pete pokes his head around the door to see a double bed with a blue cover. It looks like it hasn’t been slept in in days. Patrick isn’t so naturally tidy.

“I’ve been sleeping at the studio too,” Patrick snaps. Then he takes a breath. “Do you want a drink?”

“Coffee please.”

“Real coffee, coffee flavoured milk, milk flavoured sugar?”

“The middle one,” says Pete.

Patrick gives a glimmer of a smile and goes into the kitchen nook – the coffeepot is obviously up and running – before returning with drinks for both of them. He gets Pete’s just right.

“You put Splenda in yours,” Pete wrinkles his nose.

“I know, I’m trying to wean off it.”

“But why? Use sugar.”

Patrick snorts: “Easy for you to say, skinny.”

“You’re as skinny as me now, Trick!”

Patrick gives him the look, the same he used to give, when Pete says he was gorgeous, he was beautiful:

“I am not a thirteen-year-old girl, Pete. You don’t have to validate me so I don’t feel bad.”

“Apparently, I have to do something though,” Pete returns the arch look. “Why don’t you tell me what you wished for?”

They hold each other’s gaze for a long, searing moment. Pete is staring at a stranger and his best friend in the same body. Hemmy whines, tucks his tail between his legs and comes to Pete for comfort. Pete pets his head without breaking eye contact.

“It can’t be true,” Patrick says finally. “It can’t- I didn’t think it would work. But after you told me you’d done it, I thought –“

“Wait – you tried –“

“It didn’t think it would _work_ Pete!”

“You don’t even believe in magic!””

“Well, I do now.”

“But why did you do it?”

Patrick looks humble. “Gabe….” He says. “Gabe can be very convincing.”

Pete’s jaw practically hits the breakfast bar. “GABE? Gabe talked you into this?! That – that traitor. I knew I shouldn’t have loaned you out to him.” He doesn’t know what hurts worse – the fact Gabe and Patrick were conspiring without him, or the fact Patrick went to Gabe instead of calling Pete when he had a problem. Possibly this is unfair, seeing as Pete was both the problem and the subject of the conspiracy.

“Let me get this straight,” Pete says. “You asked Gabe Saporta make us fall in love?”

“No! No! I didn’t ask anything! All I asked for was happiness – I asked for what I missing, you asshole, I didn’t know it was _you_!”

“It….it was me?” Pete can’t help smiling a little at that. He is only human.

“It was…” Patrick shakes his head. - okay, you know Gabe always goes on about true seeing and visions and like, piercing the illusion?”

“Yeah….”

“So I was miserable, and he was around, and I guess I said some stuff about not knowing what I was doing anymore. He said he could help. Next thing I know I’m in this basement full of paraphanelia and Victoria and Ryland are there in like, acolyte clothes. I thought he was high. I thought _I_ was high. I thought someone spiked my drink. But its real, Pete. I asked the Cobra to help me see what I really wanted, and...it worked.”

“So _I_ got sent all over the multiverse till I had a Scrooge moment? That doesn’t seem very fair. Why not you? You made me time travel against my will, Patrick! That’s a violation of my person!”

“Gabe promised the spell wouldn’t do anything to us that we didn’t want. And besides, what about the ten thousand times you’ve done shit to me  
against my will, Pete? Wedgies, stage kissing, licking-

“Those things aren’t the equivalent of forced time travel!"

“In any case, it wasn’t me. It was the Cobra. The Cobra is a Trickster,” Patrick shrugs. “It has a warped sense of humor.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that from Gabe. Wait,” Pete thinks back. All the timelines are getting so muddled it’s hard to keep track. It _feels_ like months since the whole thing started, but most of that time was spent in the future. “When was this exactly?”

“Maybe….” Patrick scratches his head. “A week ago?”

“What time of day was it?”

“Uh, 11pm, I guess?”

“On a Tuesday.”

“I, I, think so. Yeah, because we’d just finished that beat Alex was laying down. How did you know?”

“Okay, I guess it wasn’t so much a violation of my person,” Pete admits. “Patrick – we did this. Together.”

Patrick stares at him.

“That night, I was on the roof – NOT IN THAT WAY, sorry, sorry, I just mean I was up there thinking about life and shit, and I made a wish on a shooting star. I didn’t wish to go back in time, but I wished – I guessed, for what you wished for. That we could see what we needed to. The Cobra granted both our wishes.”

“But….” Says Patrick slowly. He puts his coffee cup down carefully. “That would imply that you were in love with me.”

“Yeah….” Says Pete equally slowly. “Like I’ve been saying, every day since we met and I could probably have gone to jail for it.”

“But – “Patrick spluttered. “That – you never meant it! That’s just what you’re like with everyone, you tell everyone you love them, toss that word around like it’s meaningless – “

“It’s not,” Pete says, and grabs Patrick’s hand. “Patrick, it’s not meaningless for you. I meant it every time, even when you hated me.”

  
Patrick looks pained. “I never hated you,” he whispers. “Not even – I could never hate you, Pete. Not if I wanted to. You’ve been the constant in my life since I was fifteen years old. You gave me….” He gestures around then realizes the irony and laughs, a little wetly, “Well, bad example. Everything else. I meant it when I said I would be working in an office if not for you.”

Pete’s been starting to smile. But it freezes there.

“Not that I just want you because of that stuff,” says Patrick hurriedly. “Come on, you know I’m not a words guy. I love you, Pete. I’ve always known it really but it took the band falling apart for me to...I thought I could run away and it would fix my problems. I just brought my problems with me and now I miss you too. It can’t be – like it was. Fighting all the time and not talking about bullshit. But I can’t be okay unless we’re okay.” He breathes. “Jesus that was a lot of talking. Now you talk.”

Pete nods, but instead of answering he instead he gets up and with rapid movements, turns Patricks chair out to face him and drops into Patrick’s lap. He cups Patrick’s face and starts kissing him, like he never has before, not teasing and performative and with one eye on a camera. Patrick pulls back:

“Pete!” he exclaims, “You’re a married man.”

“I’m getting divorced,” says Pete.

“Y – divorced – you have a child on the way!”

“And I am utterly, fundamentally and totally unprepared to be a father. You’ll help me out with that, right Trick?”

“Well I –” Patrick giggles, “I mean I don’t – I’ll do my best.”

“Then to be honest, Patrick, I think we’ve probably done enough talking for right now. Talking is what got me sent back in time...but not talking is why we wasted all those goddamn years dancing around each other when we could have been have been having outrageously mind-blowing sex across every continent but one. So, I think the lesson here is – there’s a time for talking, and a time to not talk, and in this moment, I propose we stop talking and start – how shall I put it…”

“Don’t say it,” Patrick warns.

“Making up for lost time,” says Pete, Patrick groans out loud, then he cups Pete’s face in his hands and Pete grips his waist as they lean in simultaneously to kiss.

The End!


End file.
